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Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem

£12.69

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Label: EMI

Cat No: 3653932

Barcode: 0094636539324

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Release Date: 5th March 2007

Works

Brahms, Johannes

Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem), op.45

Artists

Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)
Thomas Quasthoff (baritone)
Berliner Philharmoniker
Rundfunkchor Berlin

Conductor

Simon Rattle

Works

Brahms, Johannes

Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem), op.45

Artists

Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)
Thomas Quasthoff (baritone)
Berliner Philharmoniker
Rundfunkchor Berlin

Conductor

Simon Rattle

About

GRAMOPHONE AWARD WINNER 2007 - CHORAL MUSIC CATEGORY

Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker return to the 19th-century Germanic repertoire on which the orchestra’s heritage has been based since its formation 125 years ago.

Ein Deutsches Requiem is unique among the best known works of this genre. This is not a setting of the Latin liturgical Requiem Mass as famously explored by Mozart and Verdi amongst numerous others. Instead of the traditional prayer for the dead, the piece is a humanitarian celebration of the joys of heaven and a message of consolation to the living, drawn and developed from Brahms’s Protestant roots. The composer himself referred to the work as a “Human Requiem” and was compelled to write it following the death of his mother in 1865.

Brahms was a self-confessed non-believer by the time he was writing the Requiem. By approaching the bible as literature he creatively takes a varied selection of passages from Martin Luther’s German translation of the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha as his text. As the title suggests, the work is sung in the vernacular, in German, making it a particular gift for the Rundfunkchor Berlin who take centre stage as the main protagonists in this work.

In a carefully planned layout to create the most cohesive musical ensemble, Simon Rattle placed the choir closely around the orchestra on the stage rather than seating them in the Berlin Philharmonie’s choir stalls above the stage.

The celestial soprano solo in the fifth movement is the beautiful centerpiece of the work and the specific dedication to the composer’s mother. It is sung on this live recording by German soprano Dorothea Röschmann who has made her name in recent years as a notably dramatic Mozart soprano. This movement was added to the Requiem later, in 1868, and surely must have been in part the reason for the great critical acclaim which the complete work received on its premiere at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1869.

Baritone Thomas Quasthoff completes the top class line up on this release; a popular guest artist with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle on stage and disc, as well as a highly respected and much-recorded lieder singer.