Fauré: Requiem / Poulenc: Gloria

What distinguishes Gabriel Fauré's "Requiem" from numerous other settings of the Requiem text is its rather intimate, restrained, almost chamber-music-like nature, a "lullaby of death," as it has also been called, initially rather as a criticism of a work that largely omits the depiction of the horrors of death and the Last Judgment. Fauré's reply, "But this is how I experience death: as a joyful deliverance, as a striving toward bliss in the hereafter rather than as a painful transition," not only describes the essential characteristics of his work most aptly, but also reveals it as a very personal expression of Fauré's own artistic nature. Two generations later, Francis Poulenc had a completely different approach to religion than Fauré. Poulenc, like Fauré, was a Southerner from France, and had been shaped by his homeland in the sense of a "rural," intense, yet sensuous Catholicism. He also regarded his "Gloria" as a more joyful counterpart to some of his other sacred works, and it is precisely in this spirit that the first movement begins in a festive mood with a striking, fanfare-like motif in the full orchestra. If Poulenc cited Gozzoli's frescoes with monks sticking out their tongues, and Benedictine monks playing football, as sources of inspiration for his "Gloria," this is nowhere so immediately comprehensible as in the 2nd movement with the choir's rhythmically pointed "Laudamus te." In both the opera house and the concert hall, Prêtre's interpretations were distinguished by their full-bodied and highly Romantic character; stylistically they often differed from those of the French conductors of the preceding generation. He was not only an effective conductor of the French repertoire, but also of the music of Italy and Germany. Prêtre was a trained and highly experienced recording engineer who possessed many years of expertise in the recording studio. His discography is extensive.