LPO: Verdi's Requiem and Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles, Royal Festival Hall

There’s a very good reason why Verdi’s  Requiem is one of the world’s most frequently performed choral sequences. Witnessed live, it’s a completely overwhelming experience. Performed by the world-class London Philharmonic Orchestra alongside Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles, this concert looks to be a highlight of the Southbank’s 2014/15 season. Dynamic chief conductor Vladmir Jurowski leads, accompanied by the orchestra’s own singers and the sensational Orfeón Pamplonés, Spain’s legendary 120-person choir.

Of all the great 19th century requiems, Giuseppe Verdi’s 1874 take on the mass is the most passionately grandiose. Famously operatic in style, it was dedicated to the memory of the great Italian Romantic Alessandro Manzoni. Running the gauntlet from terror to hope, the 90-minute piece is full of stirring solos, raging choruses and surprising orchestral melodies. The astounding Dies irae has become shorthand for the infernal depths, but it’s the following tuba mirum that really thrills, with springing brass rhythms that almost defy belief. The Offertorio begins amid fear and trembling, before the arrival of St. Michael heralds an ethereal brightness. As befitting Verdi’s text, the four soloists – Maija Kovalevska, ldikó Komlósi, Dmtryo Popov and Vyacheslaw Pochapsky – are experienced voices from the operatic world.

Igor Stravinsky ’s Requiem Canticles  (1966), composed almost a century later when the composer was eighty-four, are a different beast all together. Only a quarter of an hour long, its nine movements are ceremonial and detached, dealing with death as a prescribed aspect of life rather than a tragedy. Though composed in his knottily experimental serialist period, they draw on aspects of his earlier career in a series of variegated miniatures. The Dies irae bursts, the Lacrimosa has an austere poignancy and the Libera me references both Verdi and Britten. The Canticles are Stravinsky’s last major work, and when he died 1971, they were played at his funeral.