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Muti Verdi Requiem
Posted by Marc Bridle on October 12, 2021, 3:22 am
The BRSO/Muti Verdi Requiem which Ralph reviews first appeared on CD just over 20-years ago on a magnificent Japanese collection of 100 discs (or thereabouts) called Live Classic Best. I suppose you might call this a kind of Reader's Digest of performances - although they were all collected from live concerts from around the world: all the Strauss was from Karajan, Beethoven symphonies came from Abbado's legendary LSO Barbican cycle, there were parts of Riccardo Muti's Philharmonia Tchaikovsky cycle from the Festival Hall. Pollini gave us Beethoven sonatas. Not bad at all if you were looking for a basic collection of music. And, then there was this Muti Munich Requiem, coupled with the Four Sacred Pieces with the Berlin Philharmonic (1983).
The sound on these Verdi discs was superb - excellent stereo for the time - though for a bargain release, which the Live Classics was, there was no filtering or editing. And here I think is the major difference between these old discs and this BR Klassik one. I found the performance on the new discs a bit over-compressed, and lacking in atmosphere - and definitely in need of a volume push much of the time. I think Ralph generally gets the merits of the performance right - but I'm not sure I felt much Muti rawness in it, which he had in spades in his early years. It IS a raw performance but it rarely comes across that way.
Muti is quoted in the booklet as saying that any subsequent recording could never match it. Going through the Warner Muti box set recently, I listened to his Philharmonia Verdi Requiem (made before this live one) which I haven't heard for decades. It shares some of the same singers as in Munich (and Munich would have had the Philharmonia's tenor, Luchetti, rather than Carreras, had the former not cancelled at short notice), an equally inspired orchestra, and a conductor equally generating white-hot intensity throughout. I'm not sure you can really get a cigarette paper between the two performances in terms of the thrilling power they generate - although given the flatter recording quality of the BR Klassik disc the Philharmonia requiem sounds just a bit more wild, a bit more hair-raising.
It's worth looking out for the Live Classics just for the unvarnished sound you'll get. But, the performance is a killer; but then so is his studio one.
Re: Muti Verdi Requiem
Posted by Ralph Moore on October 12, 2021, 8:50 am, in reply to "Muti Verdi Requiem"
Thank you, Marc, for all that extra background information. I was indeed surprised to find that it had not previously been available individually on CD and of course was not aware that it had been included in that Japanese set; nor was I sure that it was not digital, given the slightly occluded live sound, so you have clarified those two grey areas.
I would not have minded Luchetti as he was so good in Solti's and Muti's studio recordings - he was always under-rated and somewhat over-shadowed - but Carreras is hardly a disappointment. Despite its sonic deficiencies, I think I could include this in my upcoming ROTY.