This
is the first recording of Lachner’s
Requiem, a work written in 1856 to celebrate
the centenary of Mozart’s birth. It
was first performed in Munich but there
were no further revivals until 1871
by which time Lachner had slightly revised
it. His own student Josef Rheinberger
had also written a Requiem in 1865 and
hearing it inspired Lachner to replace
his own Kyrie fugue with a Communio
toward the end of the work. It was
in this newly revised form that Lachner
conducted it in Leipzig. There’s no
evidence that there has been any performance
since, which makes its reclamation all
the more discographically significant.
No
one would claim that this is Lachner’s
masterpiece. Though it owed its genesis
to the Mozart centenary celebrations
and though there are a few – very few
– coded references to Mozart it’s essentially
a mellifluous, expert, rather fugue-heavy
work that tends toward the intimate
rather than the grandiose. The soloists
don’t have a great deal to do. The choir
on the contrary is busily engaged and
the small orchestra supports adeptly
if without great opportunities for soloistic
flourish. It’s not that sort of work.
Certainly his classicist credentials
are firmly on show as is his partial
indebtedness to Schubert.
He
casts beneficent warmth over the Recordare
and grants an intimate string introduction
to the Lacrimosa. There are drum
tattoos and brass punctuating moments
as well as those fugues. But to balance
this we have the lullaby gentleness
of the Hostias and the noble
grandeur of the Sanctus – possibly
the most impressive single movement.
The Lux Aeterna ends all with
great balm.
The
solo singers make for a good team. Tenor
Colin Balzer is eager and flexible whilst
the mezzo Roxana Constantinescu has
rather an outsize, operatic voice for
a work of this relative intimacy. The
choir and orchestra play honestly. The
acoustic is rather cloudy and even in
some of the fugal passages things become
opaque; there’s also a degree of choral
strain in Quam olim Abrahae.
Those
eager for sidelined mid-nineteenth century
choral works will take pleasure in this
enterprising reclamation. Others may
find Lachner’s choral idiom rather bland.
Jonathan
Woolf
Marina Ulewicz (soprano) 
[59:15]
