Davis’s two recordings
of the Requiem were made twenty-four years apart. His 1967
disc with BBC forces, the John Alldis Choir and soloists
Helen Donath, Yvonne Minton, Ryland Davies and Gerd Nienstadt
is still available on Penguin Classics, or if not the deletions
axe has fallen very recently. It makes a strong contrast
with this 1991 Bavarian traversal. As ever timings don’t
tell the story as the differences are minimal and often
where one might think the BBC recording might be a touch
faster it’s actually not. The difference lies in a general
feeling of approach, a greater gravity and weight of expression,
of choral and string weight and a certain approach to mass.
The 1967 recording was majestic, certainly, but more intimately
scaled whilst this later one is more demonstratively grand
and freighted with drama of a particularly intense kind.
This
approach extends to his chosen soloists and to the chorus
whose approach is often quasi-operatic, especially the
sopranos whose big and lusty vibratos stake out their emotive
territory. The orchestra is a characteristically big one,
strong and broad of texture. The four soloists blend well
and are individually good though inconsistently so - Angela
Maria Blasi for instance sometimes approaches from under
the note though her beauty of tone even at the top of her
register is notable. All four have the kind of clarion
heft that Davis demands. As for the conductor one might
say that he takes the Domine Jesu Christe of
the Offertorium rather slowly but the tempo is essentially
unchanged since 1967. The fugal entries in the Sanctus are
boldly sculpted and powerful, representative of Davis’s
concentrated fixity of purpose in this work. Those who
retain his earlier recording will know that it balanced
more equably the majestic and the inward; maybe this later
recording tends more to the former but I find it similarly
affecting and involving. As a footnote an Arthaus Musik
DVD exists of a Davis Requiem with the Bavarian forces
but with different soloists - Edith Mathis, Trudeliese
Schmidt, Peter Schreier, and Gwynne Howell.
Coupled
with the Requiem are some attractive choral fillers, if
one can so describe them. The Tölzer Knabechor, European
Baroque Soloists under Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden are buoyantly
successful in their quartet – Ave verum corpus (of
course) is here but so is the splendidly realised Te
Deum Laudamus.
For a broadly traditional
approach to the Requiem, with speeds that are never marmoreal,
and for a performance that is dramatic without exaggeration
the reissued Bavarian disc is a pleasure to hear. I retain
a slight preference for the BBC performance but newcomers
will not be disappointed whichever they hear.
Jonathan
Woolf
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Angela
Maria Blasi (soprano) 
