Britten's St. Nicholas and Faure's Requiem

Benjamin Britten's wonderful oratorio Saint Nicolas paired with Gabriel Faure's beautiful Requiem. Britten's piece, completed in 1948 using a text by Eric Crozier, enhances the drama of the legends and stories relating to the saint's life, using striking contrasts in instrumentation, vocal style, and musical textures.

Faure composed his Requiem between 1887 and 1890, and wrote of the work, 'Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.'