GREAT RECORDINGS phase 17

FAURÉ
Requiem
Pavane

DURUFLÉ
Requiem

Sir David Willcocks
Sir Philip Ledger

Robert Chilcott · John Carol Case
Janet Baker · Stephen Roberts

Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
New Philharmonia Orchestra
John Butt

3 79988 2

Mono
ADD

Recorded 1976 & 1980
79 minutes

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"The Fauré is a recording as near as can be to absolute perfection from start to finish, for which the highest praise must go to all concerned, but principally to David Willcocks for his inspiring and sensitive direction. Duruflé expresses profundities with the most restrained and subtle of musical means and Philip Ledger’s performance is scrupulously responsive to such restraint and subtlety."
(The Gramophone)

A classic of the gramophone since its first release in 1968, this account of Fauré’s Requiem naturally predates the emergence of the composer’s original version for small orchestra; but with its chapel choir of men and boys it was nonetheless a path-breaker for a less symphonic, more intimate interpretation of this work.

The same choir’s account of Duruflé’s complementary Requiem, under Sir David Willcocks’s successor at King’s, makes a natural and attractive coupling. By contrast, that work is given in the smallest of its composer’s three scorings.