Composers: Berlioz
Compositions: Requiem
Performers: Michael Spyres t, Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus, London Philharmonic Choir/Nelson
Catalogue Number: Erato 9029543064 (2CD)

Berlioz would have been chuffed. In a coup de théâtre rivalling the composer’s own, some 400 English musicians gathered in the imposing vastness of St Paul’s Cathedral, London to perform his Requiem exactly 150 years after his death. The Grande Messe des morts (as Berlioz called it) is full of Romantic excess: on top of a huge orchestra that includes 18 double basses, 16 timpani, 12 horns and 10 pairs of cymbals, there are...