If you, like so many others, have been won over by the Durufle Requiem in recent years, you'll be glad to know there's an increasing variety of recordings to choose from.
If you're partial to the original 1947 version for full orchestra, look no further than Michel Legrand's 1994 Teldec CD, surgingly dramatic and warmly flowing. If it's the organ-accompanied version and you don't mind the whitish, semi-exposed sound of an English boy choir, check out George Guest's on London, which economically couples the Durufle with not only more of his music, but the Faure Requiem - his acknowledged inspiration - and more music by Durufle, Faure and Poulenc.But if it's the 1961 revision for organ and chamber orchestra that piques your interest, here are two recordings worth investigating, each chock full of more Durufle.
Between them, I would opt for Piquemal's, on Naxos - and not just for reasons of price.
For these are wonderfully effulgent readings, bringing out the music's more radiantly atmospheric qualities. And the same is true of the other choral pieces on his two CDs, including the multihued "Cum Jubilo" Mass - though Durufle himself, on the above-listed Erato CD, makes more of its exultancy (with cymbals, no less) and darker colorings.
Keene, by contrast, offers a radiant transparency of his own, the clarity extending from the precisely graded dynamics of his choir to the string tremolos of the "Domine Jesu Christu," here very sharply defined. I also like the searchingly hollow sound his men bring to the "Agnus Dei" of the "Cum Jubilo" Mass, and, for what it's worth, he, unlike Piquemal, opts for the organ-accompanied unison version of "Notre Pere" - again, an interesting alternative.
Here again I find Piquemal's freer, more expansive a cappella rendition preferable. Nor are his discs hurt by the inclusion of some of the organ music, also expansively performed by Eric Lebrun on the handsome-sounding Cavaille-Coll organ of Paris' Church of Saint-Antoine des Quinze-Vingts (including an especially memorable Toccata).
The bonuses on Durufle's CD include the only recording I know of his gorgeously Ravelian "Three Dances for Orchestra." Similarly Philips fills out its new recording of the Faure Requiem, with Mar-rin-er conducting, with the orchestral version of the "Pavane," Ravel's own piece of that title and shorter, Faure-inspired works of Koechlin, Schmitt and Ravel.
Still, the prime interest here is the Requiem, here in its full-orchestra version yet more contained in sound and emotion than some recordings of the chamber version. (Yes, like Durufle's, this "lullaby of death" exists in multiple scorings.)
That bothers me more in the earlier sections, where even in the "Sanctus" things seem overly subdued and rhythmically uneven. But once past McNair's ethereal solo in the "Pie Jesu," Marriner seems to warm to the work, imparting strength and flow to the "Agnus Dei" and continuity through the "Libera me," concluding with an angelic "Paradisum."
Similarly both "Pavanes" seem slower and more remote than some others. But in the case of Ravel's, in this context that proves really quite affecting.