There is something I can’t quite understand here. This is the second time within a week that, care-of one record company or another, I have visited Winchester Cathedral. At their Stanford recital (Hyperion, 7/98) they allocated a seat from which one was powerless to rise though wishing all the time to be nearer; now they seem to think I would do better right at the back. Yes (perhaps they say): “from there you get the best perspective, the full chiaroscuro”. And it is true that at the first “ex lux perpetua” in the Requiem the crescendo, so welcome because one no longer leans forward to listen, does shine forth like sunlight illuminating the great East window. So perhaps it is worth sitting in aural dimness to enjoy that effect. But really I don’t think so, especially when in the Cantique de Jean Racine the organ, dim and distant at the start, almost disappears out of hearing when the voices enter. With a slow tempo (the timing is 5'53'' to Pople’s 4'59'' and Marlow’s 4'44'') the effect is not happy at all.
This is a pity because in many respects the performances are fine, as indeed one would expect them to be. The Requiem particularly wants a choir with good sopranos (or trebles, as here) and tenors, and Winchester is strong in both. The alto-tenor passage at the start of the “Offertoire” is beautifully done. Nancy Argenta sustains the “Pie Jesu” well, and Simon Keenlyside is the ideal baritone soloist. There is sensitive playing too, the brass fully effective (this is the 1893 version, edited by Rutter) without too much assertion, and the subtle instrumentation of the Agnus Dei is beautifully brought out. In the unaccompanied motets which complete the programme the choir deploy their customary intelligence and fine tone, their outstanding treble soloist, Kenan Burrows, doing excellent work for Jean Roger-Ducasse whose three Motets (1911) move, each in turn, to a well-placed climax. These ‘fill-in’ pieces might even have gone so far as to convert a somewhat mixed report into a more decisively favourable one, but I think on the whole one is better off with Faure’s Messe basse (Pople), Durufle’s motets (Marlow) or Saint-Saens, Debussy and Ravel (Gardiner). '