Harmonia Mundi: Requiem — Howells, Whitacre & Pizzetti (Conspirare, Craig Hella Johnson) — Hybrid SACD

Brand new! Factory packaged! As pictured! Buy with confidence!

Product Details:

• UPC: 093046751869
• Catalog Number: HMU 807518
• Label Code: LC 7045
• Product Type: Hybrid SACD (Super Audio CD)
• Brand / Label: harmonia mundi (USA)
• Composers: Herbert Howells, Eric Whitacre, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Donald Grantham, Stephen Paulus, Eliza Gilkyson
• Ensemble: Conspirare — Craig Hella Johnson & Company of Voices
• Conductor: Craig Hella Johnson
• Release Year: 2009
• Genre: Classical
• Style: Choral, sacred / a cappella

Product Features

• Format: Hybrid SACD — plays on any standard CD player
• Discs: 1
• Total playing time: 72′47
• Audio: DSD, Multi-channel & Stereo
• Production: USA · Made in Italy
• Condition: Brand new, factory sealed

Overview

Six composers, one subject: how the living hold on to the dead. Conspirare's program moves from Herbert Howells' grief-shadowed Requiem — written after the death of his young son — through Eric Whitacre's luminous e.e. cummings settings, into Pizzetti's severe, plainchant-rooted Messa di Requiem, and out to quieter American voices in Grantham, Paulus, and Gilkyson.

Craig Hella Johnson's choir sings with the kind of blend and dynamic control that made Conspirare a Grammy-winning name in American choral music. The Pizzetti is the weight at the center — eleven minutes of "Dies Irae" that builds without ever shouting — while Stephen Paulus's "The Road Home" and Gilkyson's "Requiem" land softer and more personal.

This is a hybrid SACD recorded in DSD, so the surround and stereo layers are there for high-end systems, but it plays on any disc player. Two of the works here — the Grantham and the Gilkyson — were receiving their first recordings. Around 73 minutes, beautifully engineered.

Interesting Facts

• Conspirare, based in Austin, Texas, won the Grammy for Best Choral Performance and has earned multiple nominations under founder Craig Hella Johnson.
• Howells composed his Requiem in the 1930s following the death of his nine-year-old son Michael; he withheld it from publication for decades, and material from it fed into his larger work Hymnus Paradisi.
• Eric Whitacre's settings here draw on poems by e.e. cummings, including "i thank You God for most this amazing day."
• Donald Grantham's "We remember them" and Eliza Gilkyson's "Requiem" appear here as world-premiere recordings.
• Pizzetti's Messa di Requiem (1922) is largely a cappella and looks back to Renaissance polyphony and Gregorian chant rather than the Romantic orchestral requiem tradition.
• Stephen Paulus's "The Road Home" sets a melody adapted from the early-American shape-note tune "The Lone Wild Bird."

Track Listing

Herbert Howells — Requiem

1. Salvator Mundi — 2:19
2. Psalm 23 — 2:44
3. Requiem aeternam (1) — 3:48
4. Psalm 121 — 2:41
5. Requiem aeternam (2) — 4:02
6. I Heard a Voice From Heaven — 4:01

Eric Whitacre — from Three Songs of Faith (e.e. cummings)

1. hope, faith, life, love — 4:06
2. i thank You God for most this amazing day — 7:00

Donald Grantham

1. We remember them — 4:37

Ildebrando Pizzetti — Messa di Requiem

1. Requiem — 6:37
2. Dies Irae — 11:20
3. Sanctus — 3:33
4. Agnus Dei — 2:11
5. Libera Me — 5:37

Stephen Paulus

1. The Road Home — 3:57

Eliza Gilkyson

1. Requiem — 4:11

Publishers

Released by harmonia mundi usa in 2009, catalog number HMU 807518. Production in the USA, manufactured in Italy. Recorded in DSD as a hybrid Super Audio CD.

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