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Berlioz's Requiem on CD

2911 Views 15 Replies 13 Participants Last post by  PathfinderCS
2009 thread about the work

I've started a Berlioz Grande Messe des Morts challenge in the last days, counting 30 different performances. I have other questions, but which are your favourite performances and what do you like to feel listening to them?
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Ditto. I love much Berlioz but still can't warm to this. i have the Bernstein DVD, the Munch (a Munch?-- BSO), McCreech, Levine/BPO, maybe others.

And I was fortunate to be in Amsterdam a couple of years ago for Pappano and Javier Camarena with the Concertgebouw....

I end up with multiple copies of things I really love, first, or second, for works I don't get in an attempt to find it in a particular performance. I would have given my eye teeth to have heard Bernstein's performance in Les Invalides -- except that I wouldn't after having seen the DVD.

More work to do, I guess.
Maybe try Colin Davis; the 50's account is the "classic" recording of this work. He did it again shortly before he died on SACD which is another excellent account if you don't mind the extreme reverberation from the cathedral he recorded in.

Berlioz himself thought this was his finest work and I tend to agree with him and this isn't due to the fact I don't like his other stuff. Compared to orchestral works I find there are relatively few true non-opera choral masterpieces; in my mind, this ranks amongst some of the very finest of them.
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