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Barry Millington's rating
Reader rating
Description: Sir Colin Davis takes the baton, accompanied by soprano Christine Brewer, mezzo-soprano Larissa Diadkova, tenor Stuart Neill and bass John Relyea. With the London Symphony Chorus.
Phone: 0845120 7500
Website: www.barbican.org.uk
Email: info@barbican.org.uk
Trains: Tube/BR: Moorgate/Barbican 
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 9am-8pm, Sun 11am-8pm
Extra info: Parking, Pub, Food
Magisterial: Sir Colin Davis
No requiem reeks more of greasepaint than that of Verdi. The task of its interpreters is therefore to find an appropriate balance between its operatic and sacred elements.
Last night’s performance, dedicated to the late, much-missed Richard Hickox, who had recorded the work with the same forces, offered a neat solution. While the quartet of soloists — Christine Brewer, Karen Cargill (standing in for Larissa Diadkova), Stuart Neill and John Relyea — transported you straight to the Met, the conducting of Colin Davis had a more self-denying, supplicatory quality.
The first time we hear the soloists, in the opening Kyrie Eleison, each in turn has a soaring line enabling them to stand and deliver. These four did exactly that and terrific it sounded, too. At the same time you feared that there might be problems of balance, not to say ego resolution, later on.
When the characters of Gilda, the Duke, Maddalena and Rigoletto come to the fore in the famous quartet of that opera, nobody minds but in the Requiem there needs to be more give and take, more homogeneity. That was not always obvious here, though to be fair, there were some fine moments of vocal ensemble from time to time, especially involving Brewer and Cargill.
Davis, meanwhile, demonstrated his magisterial ability to find a fitting register for each movement in turn: apocalyptic terror in the Dies Irae, exuberant acclamation in the Sanctus, celestial radiance in the Lux Aeterna. It may have lacked the spine-tingling frisson that Valery Gergiev, for example, brings to the work but what Davis may lack in theatricality he makes up for in spiritual intensity. For the London Symphony Chorus, on top form, it was an opportunity to pay a final, moving tribute to the inspirational Hickox, choral conductor par excellence.
Repeated Wednesday (020 7638 8891).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
