Concert: Duruflé Requiem

Nottingham Cathedral hosts a performance of Maurice Duruflé's Requiem on Friday 6 November, with the Nottingham Cathedral Choir taking the lead. It's a single-work concert, so the whole evening centres on this one piece rather than a mixed programme. The choir is joined by Timothy Selman on the organ and Peter Siepmann conducting, and the whole thing runs for about an hour.

Duruflé wrote the Requiem between 1941 and 1947, and the cathedral describes it as one of the jewels of the twentieth century's choral repertoire. It's a setting of the Latin Mass for the dead, and the cathedral puts forward a particular way of listening to it: that it holds grief and beauty in the same breath. That's the kind of thing that makes it a natural fit for the season of Remembrance, which is when this performance falls.

If you're not familiar with it, Duruflé's Requiem is known for being more melodic and atmospheric than some of the heavier settings of the Mass. It's built on Gregorian chant, so it has that slow, floating quality that carries through the whole thing. Hearing it in a cathedral space, with the choir and the organ working together, is how it was meant to be heard.

The concert starts at 7pm on Friday 6 November at Nottingham Cathedral (St Barnabas Cathedral), North Circus Street, NG1 5AE. Admission is by donation, though they ask that you book your place in advance via Eventbrite.