Giuseppe Verdi - Messa da Requiem (2010)

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Giuseppe Verdi - Messa da Requiem (2010)

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When I think of Helmuth Rilling, I don’t think of Verdi. More than half of Rilling’s nearly 250 catalog entries are of works by J. S. Bach and other members of the Bach dynasty. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t branched out into later repertoire. I’ve collected his excellent cycle of Haydn’s late Masses and recordings of works by Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. But how, I wondered, would he manage the massive forces of Verdi’s Requiem. The answer is magnificently. This is without question the best performed, the best recorded, and the most perfect recent version I’ve heard.

For starters, the Stuttgart Gächinger Kantorei is almost too good to be true. Even in Verdi’s most congested choral passages, the choristers’ diction is so clear and precise you can make out every word. But it’s not just their diction that amazes. Their unanimity of entrances and absolutely perfect pitch come close to making them sound almost as if they’re singing one to a part. Hänssler’s recording plays no small role in the proceedings. It provides far better than usual separation between channels and hence between sections of the choir, so that in a cappella passages, some of which are quite chromatically tortured, the voice-leading can be heard with a clarity that resolves the harmony instead of making it sound, as it not infrequently does, like an exercise in early atonality. Try the “Te decet hymnus” early on in the Introitus to hear what I mean. Or for an example of the intricate interplay of complex and competing rhythms between choir and orchestra, listen to the Sanctus. I was able to hear details in the choral counterpoint I previously knew were there only from reading the score.

Have I heard a Dies irae more likely than this one to rouse the neighbors if not the dead? Probably. Gergiev’s bass drum on Philips can rattle your windows and give you a real punch in the gut. But Verdi’s Requiem—even the Dies irae—is about so much more than visceral thrills and theatricality. Rilling’s “Day of Wrath” packs plenty of wallop, but it projects something beyond a sonic boom, something I think Verdi intended, and that is a palpable sense of bearing witness to Divine retribution. You hear it in this performance not just in the blasting of the trumpets and blaring of the brass, but in the little quaking and trembling figures in the clarinets and bassoons. Just as there is spectacular clarity, separation, and delineation in the choral parts, so too do the smallest details in Verdi’s orchestral score emerge with stunning presence.

The vocal quartet is superb. As with the chorus, when singing together unaccompanied by the orchestra, their intonation doesn’t waver. It’s really quite remarkable, and such a pleasure, to listen to the unaccompanied mezzo, tenor, and bass sing the passage beginning with the words “Requiem aeternam” in the Lux aeterna (at 1:47 on track 3 of disc 2), and be able to hear which way Verdi’s chromatic voice-leading is heading. Others I’ve heard head straight into a non-tonal no-man’s land.

In my experience, perhaps no tenor will ever produce the hushed and honeyed Hostias managed by Jon Vickers in his recording (another on EMI) with Barbirolli, but Alfred Kim comes close for Rilling. For the soprano, the ultimate test is her extended solo against the a cappella choir in the closing Libera me movement. Luba Orgonášová is phenomenal, floating her voice above the choir like an angel, and landing on her high note at the end with effortless grace and a tone of pure silver that hangs in the air with the resonance of a flute.

I’ve listened to lots of Verdi Requiems over the years (I’ve even had the experience of playing in a performance of it, and it’s damn hard), but rarely have I enjoyed the piece as much as I have with this new recording.