Perhaps the most direct model was Bach, who set each of his 295 Church cantatas as a series of recitatives, arias, choruses, chorales and sinfonias (instrumental interludes) to a selection of Biblical texts, poetry and hymns intended to reflect and expound upon a teaching or concept. Hardings sense of structure in this 2019 recording is assured and persuasive, evoking a slow, dignified but steady move from the depths of grief into a bruised but courageous renewal. Many accounts of this recording tend to apologize for the need to overcome post-war deprivations (excuse me while I dry my tears), but what emerges is a fine combination of beauty and fervor that radiates sincerity. Musgrave notes that the result enabled Brahms to achieve the same pattern of integrating variations of familiar musical forms that characterizes all of his mature long-form works. WebSummary. Recorded live at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 2008. While marginally more dramatic (the powerful chord that concludes III is sustained for an astounding 18 seconds; in Stockholm it was "only" 12), the Lucerne recording resisted even the extraordinary restoration efforts of Maggi Payne and remains sonically challenging, afflicted not just with poor fidelity but severe wow, overload distortion and noise that often overwhelms the music and precludes genuine appreciation. For this first European studio German Requiem, producer Walter Legge reportedly passed up the opportunity to preserve Furtwngler's glowing account and instead gambled on his young wartime rival. Speaking of slow performances As summarized by Patrick Lang in his CD liner notes, Celibidache's Brahms was thoroughly serious, weighty and deep, with controlled, internalized passion and severe aristocratic stillness governing all its emotions. He also held his first demanding job as conductor of the Vienna Singakademie, a role that exposed him to several centuries worth of choral repertoire. Sometimes he communicated these ideas through letters, many of them included in the 1996 Shaw biography, Dear People. Yet even in the 20th century, Specht castigated its fugues as "petrification of rough-hewn themes" and as "music for the eyes" that doesn't move the soul, even while conceding that "never before had the departed been sung to rest with a lullaby of such solemnity and consoling beauty." It provides historical information, performance considerations, musical analysis, and resource material for all who enjoy the musicology behind this magnificent work. She is a regular critic for BBC Music Magazine and broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and BBC TV. Although Brahms did not point to the precise source, Ochs decided he was referring to Bachs chorale Wer nur den lieben Gott., Moving to the nearby piano, Musgrave played the tune in question, familiar to Lutherans as the hymn If thou but suffer God to guide thee. The comparison was convincing. By 1872 its text had been translated into English. It is both curious and disturbing that such an accessible work had to wait until 1947 for its first studio recordings clearly a sign of producers' low confidence in its commercial prospects. Even so, Alex Robertson notes that Brahms' return to the source writings carries historical weight, as it invokes the earliest Christian burial arts and practices, as preserved in the Roman catacombs, in which themes of rest, peace and sleep are combined with depictions of everyday life activities. The orchestral sound is revelatory, evoking the austerity of a church organ without relinquishing a jot of emotional weight. With the NBC concert, we confront the vexing issue of translation. Wilhelm Furtwngler, Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Bernhard Snnerstedt, Kerstin Lindberg-Torlind (1948, Music & Arts CD, 79'). The requiem emerged from a decade of turmoil. He feels the touching soprano solo transforms the entire work. The reason for holding it back, he suspects, is that Brahms needed the reassurance of a successful premiere before unveiling this section of the piece. As might be expected, the choral singing is rich and natural, with confident pacing. I could see he could channel more than music, but life itself. This will be between the soloists, the audience, and me. Ratzlaff says the singer next to him vowed he would never perform for Shaw again. While some may find this 1961 recording too woolly, Klemperers handling of tempo and pace reveals a profound, deeply impressive sense of architecture. The contradictions in Brahmss theologyreligious skepticism combined with undeniable spiritualityappealed deeply to Robert Shaw, according to Craig Jessop. The sixth movement is the perfect dramatic corollary to the second, Goernes surprisingly tender utterance of We shall be changed leading to tremendously exciting choral singing of Death, where is thy sting?. Let's begin by exploring these, together with some others that follow the paths blazed by the pioneers. While I personally prefer a more vivid reading, I still have to admire the purity of concept and the extreme to which Celibidache molds the work to his unique vision. Natasha Loges is the head of postgraduate programmes and professor of musicology at the Royal College of Music. WebBrahms: Ein deutsches Requiem. To return to the title, a further connotation addresses the issue of language itself. There is no rushing here; this is a measured, patient walk towards reconciliation with death. The timings, both overall and of individual movements, are somewhat deceptive, as his fast sections are very rapid, while the slow portions tend to be quite measured. That wakes up peoples listening skills., As he watched the rehearsal video, Jessop experienced renewed appreciation for count singing. Vocally, Brahms is as exhausting a piece as a chorus is asked to sing, he told the video interviewer. A choral introduction of meandering harmonies searches for earthly stability ("We have no continuing city, but we seek one to come"), the baritone raises the prospect of resurrection ("Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not sleep "), the chorus excitedly proclaims victory ("Death, where is thy sting? In the second The Symphony is joined by the Kalamazoo Bach Festival Chorus for a bit of Mozart and the concerts focal point: Johannes Brahms heartfelt Requiem to hope, courage, and the anticipation of joy. But he didnt want us to know much about it. An 1865 letter to his dear friend Clara Schumann provides the first recorded evidence of its existence. Similarly, the Andante con moto of the final movement was replaced with Feierlich (ceremonially) regardless of how it is done, it remains challenging even for experienced choirs. and then plunges into a magnificent choral fugue assuring that "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God." As Shaw pondered his own translation in 1999, Jessop assumes his motivation must have been the same as it was 40 years earlier when he created an English version of Bachs St. Matthew Passion. WebBrahms chose the texts that were dearest to him. The choir sounds both substantial and luminous, with crystalline German, effectively navigating the long and demanding fugues. In keeping with the two soloists' respective functions, the baritone aptly quakes with excitement, while the soprano is serene. Matthias Goerne is a superbly racked soloist in the third movement anyone who has helplessly contemplated their own mortality can relate to the Promethean despair (and the rage, in the repeated section) of that molten, burnished voice. Alas, the only source is a shortwave transmission; even after exhaustive restoration efforts severe irreparable sonic defects of constant swish, considerable phase distortion, low fidelity, dropouts and a major gap remain, leaving more to the imagination than this extraordinary souvenir deserves. Inserting the Handel aria was clearly a sticking-plaster solution, so Brahms wrote a new fifth movement, for soprano solo and chorus, on the words: Now you mourn, but I will comfort you like a mother. Yet the two realizations, while both exceptional, are far from identical the Norrington is notably leaner, crisper and faster and with good reason our only indications are indirect and thus somewhat speculative. This overview is On balance I suppose I would opt for Norrington's as the more outspoken. [All listings below are in the format of: conductor, orchestra, chorus, baritone soloist, soprano soloist (year, source, timing in minutes). He was the most significant figure in our profession for 40 years.. Symposium chair Andr Thomas, director of choral activities at Florida State University, dreamed that for the participants, it would feel something like sitting around the table with the renowned mentor Nadia Boulanger, a chance for them to spend four days immersed in the genius of Brahms and one of his greatest interpreters, Robert Shaw. This really is Shaw's third and final recording having prepared it, he died shortly before the actual sessions, which then were realized by his colleague. It was not immune from the 19th century temptation to find specific fanciful references in place of musical allusion; thus, biographer Richard Specht writes of the opening: "One has the impression of seeing a tranquil procession of white-clad women walking slowly past sacred pools toward a chapel ." Unlike most large religious works, the German Requiem was not written in response to a commission or for a public event, and so efforts to trace its inspiration are somewhat diffuse. At a slow and patient 79 minutes, time seems suspended in a rarified atmosphere of deep spirituality. The requiem emerged from a decade of turmoil. Yet in the more segmented movements he manages to differentiate the individual sections, thus maintaining their integrity and distinctive character, even while integrating them through logical transitions. The structure of the Requiem is such a powerful thing, the way the end brings back the beginning through inversions and use of identical text: Selig sind. Ann Howard Jones took this opportunity for some practical advice: Structural analysis is the nitty-gritty of our work. The analysis starts big and goes lower and lower, she says. Shaws approach facilitated his singers understanding of structure and their ability to avoid mistakes. WebIn 1865 Brahms was hit by a second death, that of his mother, a simple, honorable soul whom he adored. Eduard Hanslick, who ultimately would bestow upon the work the supreme praise of being a worthy successor to Bach's B Minor Mass and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, likened the ending to "rattling through a tunnel on an express train" and wrote: "After long expanses of delicately lyrical, poetic music, the piece seemed to end by clubbing the audience about the head." Musgrave teaches graduate-level courses in critical editing at the Juilliard School, and one of his contributions to a new edition of Brahmss complete works will be the Requiem. The build-up to the climactic cry that all flesh is as grass leaves the listener broken, before the visceral relief at the major-key reassurance which follows. Lott presents what he considers the most important hermeneutical guide to the Requiem musical analysisin Chapter Five, explaining that Brahms set his Natasha Loges explores Brahmss unique reflection on the journey towards the grave and the afterlife as she compares the best recordings of A German Requiem. R. Kinloch Anderson cites the ghostly sound of the opening as proof of Brahms' sense of orchestral color and the patter of harp, flute and pizzicato violins as his sensitivity to specific words (in this instance accompanying mention of raindrops). "A German Requiem" by Brahms DW 04/09/2020 It comprises seven movements, which together last 65 to 80 minutes, making it Brahms's longest composition. The soloists are nicely restrained and the choral fugues unfold with clarity and detailed interplay of their vocal lines. Perchance through his title Brahms is modestly telling us that he did not purport to have created "the" definitive German requiem nor any other sort of authoritative proclamation, but rather sought to offer just one among infinite approaches toward understanding and grappling with the ultimate mystery of life and accepting the inescapable tragedy of our mortality. James Levines 2004 recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra would reinforce that view it is dirge-like without grandeur, unrelentingly static.
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