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Duruflé/Poulenc - Requiem & Motets - Rheinische Post

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“We find ourselves in the wrong church, and possibly also in the company of the wrong organ builder, but this is an entirely accomplished recording in which changes of recording venue cause no break in style, but lend enormous dynamic impetus.

Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) was one of the masters of the French organ school, a renowned improviser and an imaginative composer. From 1929 he was organist at the Parisian church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont (with its wonderful but lesser-known Cavaillé-Coll organ). The Requiem Op.9 is among the most important pieces of his slender output and exists in several versions; it was premiered on All Saints Day 1947.

Now the work is available in a superb new recording made in another Parisian church, namely St. Eustache, home to a mighty 101-register organ by the Dutch firm of Van Den Heuvel. It doesn’t always have to be Cavaillé-Coll after all. Harrison Cole extracts voluptuous, terrifying, floating and angelic tones from this instrument which is soft cushion and dynamo in one. The choral parts are taken by the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge: young, educated, highly musical people for whom no tessitura is to high and no forte is too demanding, and who follow the work’s intrinsically Gregorian lines like initiates.  I have rarely heard the ‘In Paradisum’ sung so beautifully.

Stephen Layton conducts with inconspicuous intensity. He reveals the work’s tender character in masterly fashion, despite several tempestuous climaxes. Four motets by Poulenc complete a treasurable disc. The Duruflé recording (on the Hyperion label) was incidentally originally made for an online video release. The sight of these young choral singers in this mighty church, singing as if their lives depended on it, but constantly maintaining a singular control over the sound, is deeply moving.”


Wolfram Goertz

Duruflé/Poulenc - Requiem & Motets
Hyperion Records CDA68436