Even Ansermet’s most devoted acolytes would be hard
pushed to defend the performance of the Requiem enshrined in this Decca
Eloquence disc. Admirer of the conductor though I am – his Brahms was
often deeply impressive, his catholicity in the modern repertoire sagacious
and pointed – I’m afraid that there is little to salvage from the recording
other than the singing of Gérard Souzay. Ansermet’s way with
the Requiem is replete with sluggish tempi and adduced piety and is
inconsistent both in tempo relation and architecture. Furthermore the
Suisse Romande was, on this showing, nowhere near its finest and the
Choir make a quite lamentable exhibition of themselves. The Introit
and Kyrie is an unimaginative trudge; the first entry of the tenors
show them to be undisciplined, hoarse-toned, raucous and unblended,
featureless in phrasing, deficient in balance and with an overemphatic
deliberation that is truly dispiriting to hear. Nor did I much like
what followed; the Offertoire is lugubrious and the sopranos are unstable,
with the kind of oscillatory collective vibrato that envelops the work
in generic simplicities. Danco is a treasurable singer, of course, but
even her contributions sound rather too matronly to my ears and too
operatic for comfort, failing to scale down her voice, rolling her consonants
with rather too much relish in the Pie Jesu and emerging unvaried and
unsympathetic in approach. Souzay is, as I suggested earlier, the ornament
of the performance. Those who know and admire his Fauré Chanson
album will know how sensitively attuned he is to the milieu, how flexibly
he phrases, how well he husbands tonal reserves, how, for want of a
better word, appropriate his singing is here. What remains so unavoidably
and unignorably problematic is the near catastrophic mess going on around
him. Which makes the orchestral pieces’ relative excellence all the
more unexpectedly welcome. Sensitive and pliant string playing and phrasing,
some verdant woodwinds, deep hewn cellos and Ansermet himself, notably
impressive in Pelléas et Mélisande. The Masques
et Bergamasques suite is joyous and perfectly weighted and judged,
with considerable elegance of orchestral playing. But these orchestral
performances are saddled with a Requiem so disappointing that it makes
a recommendation quite impossible.
Jonathan Woolf
AVAILABILITY www.buywell.com
Suzanne Danco, soprano