Review by David Denton - October 2009 - David's Review Corner With involving fervency under the experienced direction of David Hill. The Bach Choir has clearly taken this Requiem to its collective heart (by no means an automatic reaction to a commission!) and performs it Some of the string writing (in the Communio, for instance) does recall Fauré, but with a more troubled undertow,Īnd overall Rütti's voice is unquestionably distinctive. Happening texturally and harmonically to interest a more sophisticated palette. Rütti's idiom is hard to describe without making it sound derivative - broadly tonal, certainly, but even at its most obviously 'accessible' (in the intimately lyrical Agnus Dei) with enough These are arrestingly imagined, moving moments. In stark contrast, the work both begins and ends a cappella, the soprano symbolising, as Rütti comments, 'that we enterĪnd leave life weak and alone'. The surgingly operatic imprecations of its soprano and baritone soloists. Carl Rütti's finished product, however,įeels an altogether bigger-boned, more explicitly dramatic composition: nowhere in the Fauré is there anything approaching the ferocity of the wrenching string writing introducing the Kyrie, nor Strings, harp and organ - the original Bach Choir commission for this Requiem specified the work should be for the same forces as Fauré's masterpiece. Review by Terry Blain - December 2009 - BBC Music Magazine

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