Weill: Das Berliner Requiem

Flemish Radio Choir, I Solisti del Vento/Paul Hillier Glossa GCDSA 922207 ****

The compassionate political motivation that lay behind Kurt Weill's Berliner Requiemseems far removed from the cool neo-classicism of Stravinsky's Octet of 1923. But both works are fully of their time, a time when many composers were recoiling from what they saw

as the excesses of late romanticism. Weill wrote his secular requiem for the 10th anniversary of the end of the First World War, only to find it censored by its commissioner, Frankfurt Radio, for its celebration of Rosa Luxemburg. It survives only in truncated form, and is here reunited with one of its original parts, the cantata Vom Tod im Walde. Varied choral approaches by Hindemith ( Der Tod) and Milhaud (Cantate de la guerre and Cantate de la paix) complete this wonderfully polished collection. See url.ie/5afh