Neville Marriner

Faure: Requiem; Orchestral Works (CD)

Fluent and luminously textured accounts of Fauré’s major choral and orchestral music, compiled on CD for the first time.

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After the death of Sir Neville Marriner in October 2016 at the age of 91, Eloquence pays tribute to the conductor’s work on record with a Requiem – and the most gently consoling Requiem of them all – by Fauré. For this Philips recording in 1993, Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields were joined by a distinguished pair of soloists, baritone Thomas Allen and the soprano Sylvia McNair who were critically praised at the time for their authoritative and sensitive contributions to a performance that achieves tenderness without sentimentality.

An Argo LP of Fauré’s orchestral music – reissued complete here – was welcomed in terms which have become familiar to record-buyers down the years: for the conductor’s unobtrusive good taste, for the polish of the Academy players, highlighted by the exquisite solo contribution to the Fantaisie of the orchestra’s long-standing principal flute, William Bennett and for the harmoniously balanced Argo recording in the London church of St John’s, Smith Square.

TRACK LIST

GABRIEL FAURÉ
Requiem, Op. 48

Sylvia McNair, soprano
Thomas Allen, baritone
Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chorus
John Birch, organ
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Neville Marriner

Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80: Suite
Pavane, Op. 50
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chorus

Fantaisie, Op. 79 (orch. Louis Aubert)
William Bennett, flute

Masques et Bergamasques: Suite

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Neville Marriner