BRAHMS

Ein Deutsches Requiem          

 

Selig sind, die da Leid tragen (Blessed are they that mourn)

Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras (For all flesh is as grass)

Herr, lehre doch mich (Lord, make me to know mine end)

Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (How amiable are thy tabernacles)

Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit (And ye now therefore have sorrow)          

Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt (For here have we no continuing city)

Selig sind die Toten (Blessed are the dead)

 

Dorothea Röschmann - soprano, Thomas Quasthoff - baritone

Rundfunkchor Berlin, Berliner Philharmoniker / Simon Rattle

 

With this latest release on EMI Classics 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.

 

Following in the historic footsteps of Klemperer, Celibidache, Tennstedt, Fischer-Dieskau, Schwarzkopf and many other distinguished EMI artists, Simon Rattle brings Brahms’s most substantial yet intimate large-scale work to disc.

 

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.

 

A major benchmark work of the choral tradition of which a significant new recording has not appeared for some years, this release is highly attractive to all markets and has the potential to become the definitive modern interpretation of this wonderfully powerful and moving work.

 

EMI 3653932