Fauré Requiem; Martin Maria-Triptychon
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Gabriel Fauré, Frank Martin
Label: Koch Treasure
Magazine Review Date: 9/1986
Media Format: Vinyl
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: AMS3555
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Maria-Triptychon |
Frank Martin, Composer
Edith Mathis, Soprano Frank Martin, Composer Jean Fournet, Conductor Swiss Festival Orchestra Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Violin |
| Requiem |
Gabriel Fauré, Composer
Edith Mathis, Soprano Gabriel Fauré, Composer Jean Fournet, Conductor Kurt Widmer, Bass Lucerne Festival Chorus Swiss Festival Orchestra |
Author: Michael Oliver
No other recording of the Faure Requiem is so generously or so attractively coupled as this one: Frank Martin's Maria-Triptychon is a substantial 20-minute piece, a sort of sacred double concerto for soprano and violin. It is rather like an altarpiece by van Eyck, a 'Virgin and Child with Donors', in that the music is a response not only to the words (the Ave Maria and Magnificat in Luther's German and the Stabat mater in Latin) but to the musical personalities of Irmgard Seefried and her husband (the violin soloist in this performance), who commissioned the work. Its strong and sometimes angular lines and its beautiful archaic solemnity (both of these somewhat reminiscent of the obvious model for such a thing, Hindemith's Das Marienleben) are warmed by a lyric grace and a rapt tenderness, by an innocent piety in the first movement and a plangent expressiveness in the third that her voice and his playing seem to have co-created. Mathis does not quite have Seefried's purity of her child-like directness, and there are one or two moments of peccable intonation in this live performance that Schneiderhan would doubtless have retaken had that been possible, but it is a good performance and a welcome addition to the catalogue.
The Faure is well done, too, the divided lower strings (not too many of them) grainy but never opulent and never obscured by the pleasingly pale-voiced chorus. It is a small-scale reading, as well, in which the infrequent horn entries can make the maximum impact without the slightest need for blare or melodrama. Widmer is not always perfectly steady, but his voice is of the right weight for his solos, and Mathis is touching in the Pie Jesu. The trouble with this otherwise highly recommendable coupling is the recording, which sounds as though the hall is narrowish and the solosits had to be placed at an awkward distance from the front of the platform and the chorus a very long way away indeed. It is good to hear so much orchestral detail even in the fullest choral passages, but one sometimes has to strain one's ears to discern whether the tenors, say, are singing at all. Nor is the orchestral perspective itself satisfactory: this is a chamber orchestra with a bass as plushily rich as the Berlin Philharmonic. These flaws have less effect on the Martin, which has no chorus, but they are severe enough to put the performance of the Requiem out of the running when it comes to comparisons; one simply has to regard it as a pleasant but flawed fill-up to the Martin.'
The Faure is well done, too, the divided lower strings (not too many of them) grainy but never opulent and never obscured by the pleasingly pale-voiced chorus. It is a small-scale reading, as well, in which the infrequent horn entries can make the maximum impact without the slightest need for blare or melodrama. Widmer is not always perfectly steady, but his voice is of the right weight for his solos, and Mathis is touching in the Pie Jesu. The trouble with this otherwise highly recommendable coupling is the recording, which sounds as though the hall is narrowish and the solosits had to be placed at an awkward distance from the front of the platform and the chorus a very long way away indeed. It is good to hear so much orchestral detail even in the fullest choral passages, but one sometimes has to strain one's ears to discern whether the tenors, say, are singing at all. Nor is the orchestral perspective itself satisfactory: this is a chamber orchestra with a bass as plushily rich as the Berlin Philharmonic. These flaws have less effect on the Martin, which has no chorus, but they are severe enough to put the performance of the Requiem out of the running when it comes to comparisons; one simply has to regard it as a pleasant but flawed fill-up to the Martin.'
Fauré Requiem; Martin Maria-Triptychon
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