Recordings strategy at King’s College has several guiding principles. In addition to embodying the choir’s traditions of religion, scholarship and excellence, we aim to record the choir’s core repertoire, and to make definitive recordings of every work we approach.

This poses a particular challenge when parts of the choir’s core repertoire have been recorded very well, many times, but with the Fauré Requiem programmed so frequently in upcoming tours, we knew we had to try.

We identified an as-yet-unrecorded scholarly edition of the work as it existed at its first performance, and worked with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to bring this to life as it would have sounded to Fauré, using a small professional orchestra of period instruments, a treble soloist from the choir and former choral scholar Gerald Finley as our Baritone soloist.

Editor Marc Rigaudière provided notes for the booklet on the history of the work. I spent the tiny video budget on a GoPro, and made a timelapse of the entire recording process.

This became one of the best-selling core classical albums of 2014, and continues to be one of the most popular recordings in the choir’s catalogue. It has drawn considerable critical acclaim, and has led directly to a number of prestigious performance opportunities.