Classical reviews of the week...

Verdi: Requiem

Coro e Orchestra dell'Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecila/Antonio Pappano

EMI Classics 689 9362 (2 CDs) *****

This performance of the Verdi Requiem, recorded at concerts in Rome last January, is one with an enviable X-factor. Everything seems to fall exactly into place. The hush of the opening almost challenges you to cup your ears. The famously high-voltage day of wrath sets the blood racing. In other words, Antonio Pappano’s shaping and pacing are as sensitive to the moments that are small scale and personal as to the grander public drama. The four soloists (Anja Harteros, Sonia Ganassi, Rolando Villazón, René Pape) don’t just cover every emotion but find every awkward vocal leap within easy reach. And the recording engineers have captured the idiomatic music- making with clarity, detail and impressive splendour. www.emi classics.com

Francesco Dillon (cello), Ensemble di Percussini di Naqqara, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI/Tito Ceccherini

STR 33803 ****

The Stradivarius label’s Scelsi survey here reaches the Italian composer’s famous Four Pieces “each on one note” of 1959. The title means what it says, demonstrating a kind of minimalism far removed from more familiar varieties. Ceccherini’s performance is somewhat low on tension, but elsewhere, as in Aion (1961), he gets the music to move like a lumbering, teetering beast, prodded by threatening arousals in the brass and subterranean percussive eruptions. And there are also withdrawals into tenuous strands of pitch fluctuations and microtonal conflicts that are likely to induce wooziness. The disc includes Hymnos (1963) and an early (1945), almost gothically expressionist Ballata for cello and orchestra. www.stradivarius.it

Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture; Moscow Cantata; Marches

Mariinsky Chorus and Orchestra/Valery Gergiev

Mariinsky MAR 0503 ****

The connecting thread here is that all five works were written to order by Tchaikovsky. The public has taken two of them to heart, the 1812 Overture and the Marche Slave. But the others, the Moscow Cantata, the Festival Coronation March and the Festival Overture on the Danish National Anthem, are rarely heard. Gergiev and his Russian forces (who are appearing in Belfast tonight) treat all in a manner that is both steady and heady, the very steadiness increasing the potency of many big surges. The added cannon effects in the 1812 Overture sound synthetically electronic. The soloists (Lyubov Sokolova and Alexey Markov) and choir in the cantata are first-rate, and the Russian fervour throughout is irresistible, although the music is not without longueurs. www.mariinskylabel.com

Brahms: Symphonies

Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic made their impressive Dublin debut last September playing the Third Symphony of Brahm Now comes a complete cycle of the composer’s four symphonies, recorded at concerts in Berlin last October and November. Rattle is a patient, painstaking Brahmsian, and he likes outcomes that are incredibly well-knit, every last thread of the musical argument accounted for. You have to pay a lot of attention to what’s going on under the surface of these performances to get the most out of them. Rattle brings at times a chamber music-like quality to works that are often given much bolder and chunkier presentations. Listen carefully and these performances, which appear unprepossessing in so many ways, are full of rewarding surprises. www.emiclassics.com