 |  | They All Agreed...Cherubini was great. |  |
Ok, so if you aare new to choral music, this may not be the best way into it...as the two reviewers above can testify. But let there be no doubts about it, this IS great music. If Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms and Wagner can all agree on something (as the CD blurb tells us), you know it has to be good. Well, they all admired this composer (Cherubini), and this work in particular. If you think this work occasionaly sounds like another composer, then you have it backwards. Other composers sound like Cherubini. Even Beethoven looked up to him.
This reading by the Boston Baroque is superb: as far as mainstream performances go, there are few better than this.
I'm still a little confused by the lukewarm reaction by the two above reviewers; perhaps Cherubini is more of a composer's composer, rather than a people's composer? I personally think he is accessible. Enjoy this music.
December 23, 2007 | | One "heavy" cd of not terribly "uplifting" music | |
There is no knocking here of Martin Pearlman and The Boston Baroque.They are top notch and their other notable recordings of works such as The Bach "Brandenburgs" and the Vivaldi "Gloria" are wonderful.This cd, though,contains very heavy and dull works that are just a little too ponderous for an enjoyable listen.After commencing with Beethoven's "Elegiac Song" to start us on our downward spiral,we next procced to Cherubini's "Requiem" and "Marche Funbre"....and then we die!!! Whoever put this particular collection of works together I doubt had in mind the total effect of death that would result...or maybe they did.The Cherubini works are not great music.As Requiems go...ehh.I can't recommend this cd unless you are studying these works and need to hear interpretation.Avoid the HYBRID-SACD recording especially.
September 26, 2007 | | Pleasant enough, but not great music | |
Having enjoyed Martin Pearlman's excellent account of the Monteverdi Vespers and seeing this recommended to me by amazon.com as a result, I thought I'd try it, never having heard it (or, for that matter, heard of it). The Requiem is unusual in that it uses no soloists, purely orchestral and choral forces. Pearlman and the Boston Baroque do an excellent job, as one would expect, but the music is, to my ears, good, but not great. It is pleasantly listenable, but it is simply not the thing you (well, OK, I) would drag out for repeated listenings. It lacks that certain stamp of greatness that characterises the great religious masterpieces (Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers, the B Minor Mass, the Bach Passions, the Haydn and Mozart masses, the Missa Solemnis). "Music," said Beethoven, "should strike fire from a man's soul." My soul remained unstruck, never mind unfired.
February 14, 2007More reviews at Amazon.com ...
