This recording won a Grammy (or so I’m told). God knows why. So if you collect Grammy-winning classical music recordings (i.e., discs that have won awards given by people who don’t even have to listen to them before they vote), then I suppose it will be self-recommending. Otherwise, I’d give it a pass, for what we have here, despite fine solo singing and obvious commitment from the choral forces, is a good, semi-professional sort of effort by a well trained choir and not so special pick-up orchestra, tepidly conducted by Robert Shafer and indifferently recorded live by NPR as part of the U.S. Department of Defense’s 50th Anniversary of World War II Commemorative Event. However moving an occasion it may have been for the audience in attendance, it doesn’t carry over onto these two discs. None of the work’s big climaxes–the Dies irae, Hosanna, and most seriously of all, the Libera me–register with much intensity or impact, the fault of a seriously underpowered orchestral contribution. Here’s yet another performance that (like Shaw’s on Telarc) illustrates why choral conductors, however accomplished, generally sound boring when they bring an orchestra into the proceedings: they simply never let the instrumentalists play out for fear of drowning the chorus. Nor is their conducting style rhythmically incisive enough to encourage orchestral players to phrase with the necessary discipline or intensity. For all its vocal splendors, the orchestra in Britten’s War Requiem is much more than mere accompaniment. You’d never know it here.
