Requiem

Glorious! I have the von Karajan set with Carreras and Baltsa, whom I have had the privilege of seeing a couple of times, and for that reason won't be parted with it.

But Requiems, I particularly like the very well-known Faure, but better still Durufle. Also Victoria and Walter Vale, as sung at All Saints' Margaret Street London W1 on All Souls' Day.

But above all, for me, still the Gregorian Chant.

I want to hear more about Dudamel. The orchestra seems to love him.

The Great Performances where he did Mahler's 1st and the John Adams "City Noir" was fabulous. The musicians were on fire.

I saw him conduct a couple times, I'm sure LAP did an end run to get him before he conducted with other orchestras looking for a hot new prospect. They did that with Salonen.

My opera friend really has seen more and loves what he does. He said in 3rd Mahler 1 movement there's a long delicate line that most conductors don't get right, and Dude got it right.

It'll be a wonderful concert, glad I"m over my flu of last weekend to enjoy it.

The Verdi requiem was certainly a thrill, it was done passionately and the soloists were wonderful. Tho I sat high to the right in back of the orchestra and the vocals went out it had an ethereal affect.

Then those trumpets came in, lots of brass and at one early point they had 4 trumpets up in back of the hall answering back, stunning sound.

Last but not least the Timpani and the bass drums. What a thrill, we have a great new Timpanist that has his own set that they use onstage. He is brilliant. Our lead percussionist is a big guy and he whacked those 2 bass drums as hard as he could alternating with the Timpani. they both had big blue fabric bars that were filled laying across them to deaden the sound after the initial hit. I had to lean over and look down when that happened each time.

Sounds great :-)

Today at the Met HD broadcast I asked John about the Timpani player. He said that the amazing thing is he's young and has loads of talent, very accurate, but he knows how to get on that leading edge of the music. I notice that he's always touching them and caresses them at time to get different sounds.

http://www.laphil.com/philpedi...t-detail.cfm?id=3671