Faure Requiem - $16.95

The success of the Requiem took Fauré quite by surprise, as he had written the work purely for his own pleasure and use. As an organist, he found the music he played to accompany funerals uncongenial, particularly as he did not care for the Catholic emphasis on fear before judgement and on potential torment. Fauré’s Requiem journeys from sombre gloom, with shafts of sunlight gradually breaking through the clouds, until it reaches the clear skies of In Paradisum. This is quite simply, a gorgeous recording. With his pliant phrasing, his smooth dynamic swells, his warmly blended strings-saturated colours (woodwinds are suave rather than tangy), his tender rubato (note the elegant control of the rhythm at the end of the Requiem's Agnus Dei) and his gentle accents, Yan Pascal Tortelier highlights Fauré's transcendent calm with nothing to startle the listener or interrupt the tranquil flow of the music.'