Verdi: Requiem Mass

Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem is many things at once: a musical prayer, a sacred opera, an evocative vision of the afterlife, and a drama of the Last Judgment. The musical Requiem Mass came into being in two stages. Verdi first wrote a “Libera me” as part of a collaborative composition commemorating Gioachino Rossini, who died in 1868. On the occasion of the death of the Italian national poet Alessandro Manzoni, in 1874 he expanded his contribution to the Rossini Requiem, which had never been performed, into a complete Requiem Mass—a work that has been an indispensable part of the concert hall ever since its premiere. Jansons, according to one critic for the SZ, achieves a “convincing balance between the secular, concert-style performance and the religious content of the Mass.” The Requiem encompasses a vast range of musical emotion and architecture, intricately interwoven: its stirring intimations of the Last Judgment, tenderly radiant visions of the afterlife, heartfelt solo singing, and virtuosic choral fugues. Maestro Mariss Jansons brings them together with “his” Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks to create a coherent musical whole.