This version of the much-recorded Requiem must be the most spiritual, reverential, and perhaps visionary yet to appear, which isn't to say it is the best. I have seldom heard such a sustained legato throughout the slow movements, such warm and seamless singing, such beautiful playing—even more beautiful than the VPO gave Karajan on his last DG version. And the spacious recording, with its very wide range of dynamics (including a rather too insistent bass drum), matches the breadth and scale of the singing and playing, with the correct perspectives where Verdi calls for them—listen right near the start to the care taken over every part of the texture in the unaccompanied ''Te decet hymnus'' or the shimmering violins at the start of ''Lux aeterna''. In these respects it is very much the equal of Robert Shaw on Telarc/Conifer.
Even though Giulini is still able to summon up the fire and intensity for the ''Dies irae'', his is now, by and large, an autumnal view of the piece. His 25-year-old EMI set (reissued on CD in 1987) emphasized the devotional aspect of the work, its affinity with the Church (even if Verdi didn't consider himself part of it). Now Giulini has taken that further, turning it into something like a mystical rite. This ignores something of the more troubled and overtly emotional side of the work—an element of urgency and spontaneity that Toscanini always brought to it, and also in more recent times, if more erratically, Bernstein (CBS) and Muti (EMI). Since 1964 Giulini's speeds have grown appreciably slower, to the detriment of the work's overall pulse. Admittedly nobody is better than he at sustaining a movement at a given tempo, and in knowing how to shape a section fluidly, but time and again the result is ruminative and prayerful rather than immediate: I miss the tragic element so evident in the Fricsay version (DG) I reviewed in November. Nobody could ever call the Requiem just another opera after listening to the new performance.
By the same token, the solo singing here is more anonymous, less personal, than on Giulini's EMI set. In the first place the soloists, as in some other modern versions, notably the Muti, are placed too far away from us and become absorbed in the choral and orchestral sound. Then Giulini seems to have demanded from his well-balanced quartet a similarly solemn approach to his own. Nowhere here do I sense, as I did with the live Fricsay, that the soloists were caught up with the message they were conveying, except perhaps in the case of Sharon Sweet, latest in the lengthening list of young American sopranos at home in Verdi. She is musical and confident in the early movements then injects some intensity of utterance into her vital contribution to the ''Libera me'', which she sings with full, emotional tone, biting attack and firm control, especially in the Andante section but then the following fugue is stodgily done by Giulini.
None of the other singers, also Americans, is so personal in approach. Florence Quivar sounds light of weight and a little edgy, especially when put beside Ludwig (Giulini I) or Dominguez (Fricsay). Vinson Cole has a pleasing, attractive tenor, heard to considerable advantage in the ''Hostias'', but lacks the Pavarotti fervour (Muti). Simon Estes is simply dull, his tone stodgy and his phrasing wooden. Ghiaurov (Giulini 1), Sardi (Fricsay) and Ramey (Muti) are all preferable by a long way, but none matches the supreme Pinza now to be heard on a Pearl reissue of the old Sabajano/HMV set (where you will also catch the vigour and bite wanting here), recorded with startling presence at La Scala in 1927 ((CD) GEMMCD9374—to be reviewed later).
So any recommendation for this new version has to be hedged round with a good deal too many qualifications. Its view of the work is consistent and cogent but also one-sided. The chorus and orchestra are resplendent, though not superior to the Philharmonia forces of 1964, except in terms of recording, and the soloists there, soprano apart, are preferable. Shaw still offers a secure rounded, marvellously recorded version, though one not so vital as those conducted by Muti, Fricsay or Bernstein, or, of course, the deleted Toscanini and 1940 Serafin (both long-awaited on CD).'