MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

CD REVIEW



Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

 


alternatively AmazonUK

 

Franz LACHNER (1803-1890)
Requiem Op.146 (1856, revised 1865)
Marina Ulewicz (soprano)
Ruby Hughes (soprano)
Roxana Constantinescu (mezzo)
Colin Balzer (tenor)
Gerhard Werlitz (tenor)
Günther Papendell (bass)
Kammersolisten Augsburg/Hermann Meyer
rec. live, Kirche St. Georg, Augsburg, March 2006. 
CARUS 83.178 [59:15]



 

This is the first recording of Lachner’s Requiem, a work written in 1856 to celebrate the centenary of Mozart’s birth. It was first performed in Munich but there were no further revivals until 1871 by which time Lachner had slightly revised it. His own student Josef Rheinberger had also written a Requiem in 1865 and hearing it inspired Lachner to replace his own Kyrie fugue with a Communio toward the end of the work. It was in this newly revised form that Lachner conducted it in Leipzig. There’s no evidence that there has been any performance since, which makes its reclamation all the more discographically significant.

No one would claim that this is Lachner’s masterpiece. Though it owed its genesis to the Mozart centenary celebrations and though there are a few – very few – coded references to Mozart it’s essentially a mellifluous, expert, rather fugue-heavy work that tends toward the intimate rather than the grandiose. The soloists don’t have a great deal to do. The choir on the contrary is busily engaged and the small orchestra supports adeptly if without great opportunities for soloistic flourish. It’s not that sort of work.  Certainly his classicist credentials are firmly on show as is his partial indebtedness to Schubert.

He casts beneficent warmth over the Recordare and grants an intimate string introduction to the Lacrimosa. There are drum tattoos and brass punctuating moments as well as those fugues. But to balance this we have the lullaby gentleness of the Hostias and the noble grandeur of the Sanctus – possibly the most impressive single movement. The Lux Aeterna ends all with great balm.

The solo singers make for a good team. Tenor Colin Balzer is eager and flexible whilst the mezzo Roxana Constantinescu has rather an outsize, operatic voice for a work of this relative intimacy. The choir and orchestra play honestly. The acoustic is rather cloudy and even in some of the fugal passages things become opaque; there’s also a degree of choral strain in Quam olim Abrahae.

Those eager for sidelined mid-nineteenth century choral works will take pleasure in this enterprising reclamation. Others may find Lachner’s choral idiom rather bland.

Jonathan Woolf

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.