While much of Stanford’s large-scale music suffered increasing neglect after his death in 1924, his Requiem, commissioned for the Birmingham Festival in 1897, enjoyed a modest degree of attention during the rest of the 20th century. Boult performed it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1944 and Boris Ord at Cambridge in 1952 during the centenary of Stanford’s birth. During the 1970s it attracted the attention of Raymond Leppard, who believed (perhaps somewhat conjecturally) that the Benedictus influenced the nature of Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ theme, though this speculative connection (which found its way into an article in The Times on August 20, 1977) was backed up by the fact that Elgar heard Stanford play through his work at Birchwood in 1897 before its first public performance. Since then the work has received a fair number of hearings, both here (I also heard a fine performance of the work by the York Musical Society under Philip Moore some years ago) and abroad.

Dedicated to the memory of Lord Leighton, a close friend, the Requiem emanated from Stanford’s instincts for dramatic music. By 1897 he had completed five operas, the last of which, Shamus O’Brien (1896), had enjoyed immense success in London, on tours around the UK, on Broadway, in Chicago and in Sydney; and previous choral works such as The Three Holy Children (1885), The Revenge (1886), Eden (1891) and The Voyage of Maeldune (1892) had also shown a conspicuous predisposition for the theatrical. With the precedents of Requiems by Verdi (who knew Stanford’s score and admired it) and Dvořák (also commissioned by Birmingham in 1891), not to mention Alfred Bruneau’s Requiem (now much neglected), which The Bach Choir performed in 1895, Stanford was well placed to conceive the large-scale symphonic structure of his work and it was this aspect that caught the audience’s imagination when it was first performed. The ambience of the operatic nature of the Requiem is further enhanced by the presence of four prominent soloists (Stanford was later to emulate this model in the Te Deum, Op 66, the Stabat mater, Op 96, and the Mass Via Victrix, Op 173) who, as ‘characters’ in the drama, all perform on this recording with a sense of authority and commitment. Indeed, the soloists are spoilt for choice when it comes to the rich solo material – the sizeable tripartite structure of the Introit, Kyrie and Gradual, the gripping multi-movement sequence of the Dies irae (which puts Dvořák’s in the shade), the euphonious Benedictus and, for me, the most moving of all, the Agnus Dei, in which the closing ‘Lux aeterna’ is one of the composer’s greatest creations (I often have a lump in my throat at this point when the tenor enters).

Brabbins, who truly understands the language of this music, judges the tempos and balance of the ensemble with instinctive sensitivity; his handling of the chorus – the University of Birmingham Voices – is outstanding, and he genuinely brings out the luminosity of Stanford’s lustrous orchestration, which is splendidly executed by the CBSO, especially in the lovely solos of the Dies irae, the arresting climax of the ‘Lacrimosa’, the swirling Rhinegold-like figurations of the Sanctus and the solemn funeral cortege of the Agnus (perhaps a depiction of Leighton’s funeral and interment at St Paul’s Cathedral). The chorus sing throughout with a youthful clarity, beauty of tone and lovely intonation. However, if I had to pick out moments of particular deftness, they would be the simple but captivating homophony of the Introit and Agnus, the arresting opening of the ‘Domine Jesu Christe’ and the agility of the inventive fugue in the Offertorium (‘Quam olim Abrahae’), the gossamer textures of the Sanctus (which is like Undine emerging from the lake) and the grandeur of the choral responses to the soloists in the ‘Lux aeterna’.

In 1997 the Requiem was issued by Marco Polo in a recording with the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland under Colman Pearce. This was a most welcome recording at the time, but there is much more to learn about Stanford’s choral masterpiece from the more cohesive architecture, sound and élan of this vibrant new issue from Hyperion. For anyone interested in British choral music of the period, it is a must!