Suitably enough, Cherubini's C minor Requiem is here preceded by the too little-known Elegischer Gesang by one of his greatest admirers, Beethoven, who once said that if he were ever to write a Requiem, this would be his model.

He was not alone in his high regard. Brahms and Schumann were greatly impressed, and even Berlioz, seldom short of a harsh word for Cherubini, thought it his masterpiece. Martin Pearlman and the Boston Baroque forces tackle it with a will, most effectively in the quieter movements; and if no performance can do much for the Sanctus, the weakest movement in the work, they handle the strange and highly original Pie Jesu very effectively. Though Matthew Best's performance (Hyperion, 4/96) has rather sharper definition, the long final diminuendo that closes the Agnus Dei and with it the whole work - and that not surprisingly caught Berlioz's imagination - is strongly and well handled.

The “Quam olim Abrahae”, in which Cherubini followed tradition by writing a fugue, comes off less well here, and the recording can sometimes sound a little cramped in the louder sections.

Both discs include the extraordinary Marche funèbre. Having been put out by criticism of the Mass for opening the Dies irae with a gong stroke, Cherubini let fly here with a piece that is thoroughly gong-tormented. It also has a sombre majesty that Berlioz must have remembered when he came to write his own funeral march for the last scene of Hamlet.

John Warrack, GRAMOPHONE