Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mitropoulos
Berlioz Requiem
(ICA Classics)
THIS historic recording of Berlioz's monster (and monstrous) Requiem, with its gargantuan orchestra, vast choral forces and multiple brass and percussion, is totally compelling. It's very old, dating from August 1956, though this, apparently, is its first CD release. In some respects it shows its age: the actual recording, made in the studio of Cologne Radio, is a bit lacking in mono depth and not of the standard that the BBC in London would have produced at that time; and the Cologne RSO woodwind playing (especially in the double-reed department) is not what you'd call vintage. But the performance, in the assured and certain hands of the great Greek conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos, has a fierce concentration and an explosive intensity, fuelled by powerhouse, fervent singing from the double Cologne choirs and the extraordinary singing in the Sanctus by Swedish-born Nicolai Gedda, just entering his early thirties but already the greatest Italianate tenor in the business.
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