Fauré's Requiem at NAC Southam Hall

Saint-Saëns’s Third Violin Concerto—from its flights into the stratosphere of the violin’s register, to the finale’s whimsical flourishes—showed the composer to be a master of violin composition. Music by his countryman Gabriel Fauré completes our all-French program: the serene Requiem, once called “a lullaby of death” and “a Requiem without the Last Judgment” for its gentle nature and sublime choral writing; and Pavane, a brief work of surpassing beauty that opens the concert and includes its haunting flute solo.