Regula Mühlemann soprano
Jean-Sébastien Bou baritone

Hervé Niquet direction
Chouchane Siranossian first violon and violin solo
Le Concert Spirituel Orchestra and Choir

Sung in latin

« My requiem wasn’t written for anything … for pleasure, if I may call it that... ». This is how Gabriel Fauré described his Requiem, which is probably one of his best known and most frequently performed scores today. The idea of pleasure may seem incongruous in the context of a mass for the dead, but the musician imagined it as a form of release, a moment of happiness almost, in a spiritual sense. This may well still be the secret of its popularity today as its warm, luxuriant sonority lifts the spirit. Gounod composed some twenty sacred pieces over the course of his career, mostly in the mass or oratorio form. His Messe de Clovis is virtually contemporaneous with Fauré’s Requiem, but is completely different in style. Here, the musician harks back to the traits of the Renaissance revival which was already present in his earlier works. This maybe a historicist approach, but Gounod handles it with great verve.

Coproduction Théâtre des Champs-Elysées / Bru Zane France / Concert Spirituel