BBC Men's Chorus
George Eskdale (trumpet)
Bramwell Wiggins (trumpet)
John Ashby (trombone)
Christopher Devenport (trombone)
William Bradshaw (timpani)
George Thalben-Ball (organ)
Conducted by Leslie Woodgate
From the Church of St. George the Martyr, Queen Square, London

Liszt's Requiem was written in Rome in 1867-8. It is a concise, powerful, and dramatic work that sometimes makes an experimental use of harmony - for instance, in the whole-tone passage at the words 'ne absorbeat eas Tartarus'. Unlike Liszt's other religious music of this period it does not use Gregorian themes; Liszt had realised that the clergy of his time would never accept his music for liturgical use, and in this work, written only a few years after the deaths of his son and eldest daughter, he expressed his feelings about death in his own very personal way. (Humphrey Searle)

(Another performance: tomorrow, 10.10)