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Andrew Lloyd Webber: Requiem (Samuel Barber: Adagio)


Andrew Lloyd Webber is world-famous as the composer of the musicals Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, but his Requiem has also achieved international acclaim. Winner of a Grammy Award, this grand-sounding masterpiece of contemporary classical music, written in 1985, is dedicated to the memory of Webber's late father. The recording of a concert by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester on June 15, 2023, a tribute to the British composer who celebrated his 75th birthday in March 2023, is now presented on CD by BR-KLASSIK. This live recording from the Herz-Jesu Church in Munich features the Bavarian Radio Chorus accompanied by a select ensemble of soloists, under the baton of principal guest conductor Patrick Hahn.

There was much surprise when Andrew Lloyd Webber presented his Requiem to the public in 1985. Although classical composers had repeatedly ventured into the spheres of the so-called "light muse", hardly any path led in the other direction – from musicals or operettas to the sublime heights of sacred music. The fact that a composer like Franz von Suppé also wrote a requiem as well as operettas is a rarity. Lloyd Webber's career in the "serious" genre, however, was laid in his cradle: his father, William Lloyd Webber (1914-1982), had worked his way up from humble beginnings to become one of the leading church musicians of his day. He encouraged the classical training of his sons Andrew (b. 1948) and Julian (b. 1951), an excellent cellist. Andrew found his niche in the entertainment industry. His song "Try it and see", written for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest, was not yet a hit, but from a pop cantata he developed his first successful piece Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968), and from the concept album Jesus Christ Superstar, in which "Try it and see" also found a new home, he created the rock musical of the same name (1971). With Evita (1976), Cats (1981), Starlight Express (1984) and The Phantom of the Opera (1986), Lloyd Webber repeatedly demonstrated his flair for contemporary material that lent itself to a new kind of treatment and appealed to a wide audience. By the mid-1980s, he was the most commercially successful composer of musicals.

As Requiem Masses had been abolished in Anglican England since the Reformation, the composer did not have to consider liturgical functionality or ecclesiastical suitability. Verdi had demonstrated that the texts of the Latin Requiem Mass provided an excellent model for grand opera. And Lloyd Webber found inspiration for the lyrical dimension with hit potential in composers such as Gabriel Fauré. The texts of the Requiem were rearranged with a sense of dramaturgy. The repeated insertion of the pithy lines "Requiem aeternam" and "Dies irae" gave them a fundamental, leitmotif-like character. The theatrical potential of the sequence ("Dies irae") was expanded, as it had been with Verdi, into a kaleidoscope of human emotions in the face of death and the Last Judgement. Lloyd Webber's Requiem had its world premiere on February 24, 1985 at St. Thomas Church, New York, with tenor Plácido Domingo, crossover soprano Sarah Brightman (Lloyd Webber's wife at the time), and boy soprano Paul Miles-Kingston, under the baton of Lorin Maazel.

The new production is completed by Samuel Barber's haunting Adagio for Strings, with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Patrick Hahn. The work was recorded in Studio 1 of the Bayerischer Rundfunk from December 1 to 3, 2021.
 
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$ 13.37
 
Extra material for download
 
 
  Composer: Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber: Requiem 41:00
01 I. Requiem - Kyrie 06:17 $ 1.70 USD
02 II. Dies Ire 04:25 $ 1.19 USD
03 III. Rex Tremendae 01:26 $ 0.39 USD
04 IV. Recordare 03:16 $ 0.88 USD
05 V. Ingemisco / Lacrymosa 07:13 $ 1.95 USD
06 VI. Offertorium 04:12 $ 1.13 USD
07 VII. Hosannah 04:29 $ 1.21 USD
08 VIII. Pie Jesu 03:20 $ 0.90 USD
09 IX. Lux Aeterna 00:43 $ 0.19 USD
10 X. Libera Me 05:39 $ 1.53 USD
 
 
  Composer: Samuel Barber
11 Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 08:30 $ 2.30 USD
 
  Album total 49:30
ConductorPatrick Hahn
OrchestraMunich Radio Orchestra
ChoirBavarian Radio Chorus
PerformerBenjamin Bruns
Soraya Mafi
ComposerAndrew Lloyd Webber
Samuel Barber
LyricistAndrew Lloyd Webber
ChorusTölzer Knabenchor

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