The difference seems especially bewildering, as the Tragic Overture that opened the concert is paced the same as, and is rendered even more intensely than, a June 1935 Toscanini BBC rendition (and both are a minute faster than his official 1953 NBC recording of the Overture). Robert Shaw: (1) RCA Symphony Orchestra and Chorale, James Pease, Eleanor Steber (1947, RCA; 65'); (2) Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Richard Stilwell, Arleen Auger (1983, Telarc; 70'). The recording is somewhat crude and uncomfortably poised between clear vocals and hazy instrumentals. 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. For me, his mature confidence not only imbues the text with an appropriate nobility and assurance but compels appreciation for Brahms' achievement, inviting us to infer what we will from this fine, attentive presentation of the composer's materials. Even so, the earliest roots of the German Requiem extend back to Brahms' great mentor, the influential composer/critic Robert Schumann, who had published a glowing article hailing Brahms as a musical genius shortly after meeting him in 1853. Yet the title Johannes Brahms bestowed upon his Ein Deutches Requiem ("A German Requiem") conveys a world of genuine meaning. James Levines 2004 recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra would reinforce that view it is dirge-like without grandeur, unrelentingly static. That aspect of the Requiem deserves its own attention. All the score's details are heard clearly in an ideal balance without highlighting even the superstar soloists are placed back in the proper perspective, so that Fischer-Dieskau's effortless conviction and Schwartzkopf's sweet modesty are embedded within, rather than dominating, their sections. The dead march which follows ranks with his most outstanding accomplishments: haunting of key, with violins and violas subdivided into three parts each, and over a relentless distant tattoo in the timpani. Shaw was drawn to the texts Brahms selected; he dissected and researched all of them. Jessop remembers especially how Shaw responded to the text from Revelation Brahms used in the final movement: I dont know if the soul is immortal, but I do know your good works will follow after you.. So any gain in comprehension is offset by a loss of musical suitability. 45 (A German Requiem) by Johannes Brahms (183397). 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. For many, this is the expressive heart of the work, recalling Brahmss own tragic loss. The second movement is shapelessly slow; the fourth treacly and muffled. By April, he sent Clara Schumann two movements of the Requiem. With the NBC concert, we confront the vexing issue of translation. Nola Frink must know how that feels. She related the memory in mid-April to an audience that could well appreciate its poignancy, an intimate group of choral musicians assembled in Atlantas Woodruff Arts Center for the Robert Shaw Centenary Symposium on the Brahms Requiem, presented by Chorus America and hosted by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (ASO). But perhaps the most significant but overlooked word in the title is the first and least prominent: "Ein" ("A"). Perhaps to be heard above the timpanist's din, according to Specht the "singers were intent on shouting each other down wildly" and became "distorted into a deafening agglomeration of sound." The unusual string sound borrows much from the world of historical performance, but without sacrificing the luxurious sound and emotional vulnerability that come with the use of vibrato. Legend has it that Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, who sings her comforting solo with ravishing nurture, selflessly sang along with the chorus sopranos to bolster their efforts. For answers to those questions, Shaw would have sought someone with the expertise of yet another symposium faculty member, musicologist Michael Musgrave. More likely is that by shunning Latin for the vernacular, Brahms intended the work to be more accessible to modern audiences. What was going on in Brahmss life and work at the time he wrote the Requiem? The third movement begins with a vulnerable solo baritone imploring God for knowledge of his fate, poises on a musical brink as he agitatedly asks "What is my hope?" Yet, a translation that reflects the tight interdependence of Brahms' music and the sheer sound evoked by his original words seems elusive, if not utterly futile. In notes for the release, Shaw wrote that he had been torn for 50 years between viewing the German Requiem as a dramatic/narrative work "that might best connect with American performers and audiences in their own language" and a work that was primarily lyric, poetic or contemplative and that would be more revealing in the original. WebFor the Requiem, he draws melodic inspiration from the tunes and rhythms of Gregorian chant, which thought in similarly long phrases. Wonderfully played, sung and recorded, everything fits together superbly. Recommended. Shaws approach facilitated his singers understanding of structure and their ability to avoid mistakes. 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? While others have invested the work with greater serenity, drama or spirituality, Klemperer leads with granitic force while avoiding the grimness that afflicts some of his late work, and his supreme poise triumphantly treads the thin line between objectivity and disengagement. Christiane Karg (soprano), Matthias Goerne (baritone); Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Daniel Harding. He's often described as a "secular humanist" (perhaps synonymous with "agnostic"), but grew up in the Lutheran church and would have had strong sentimental, if not religious, connections to the Nearly 30 years later, Brahms asked his publisher to remove the metronome marks from the score, saying that good friends had persuaded him to add them. Jessop was singing for Shaw in France, and a concert of Brahms songs all related to evening, was to take place in a Toulouse cloister. Aged 32 at the time, his output up to this point had consisted largely of solo piano works and chamber music one notable exception was his First Piano Concerto which, after an underwhelming premiere in Hanover in 1859, had gone on to enjoy a better reception elsewhere. Siegfried Kross rejects these specific stimuli, deeming the work far too closely connected with Brahms' whole personality. Fritz Lehmann, Berlin Philharmonic, St. Hedwig Cathedral Choir, Berlin Motet Choir, Otto Wiener, Maria Stader (1955, DG, 80'), Rudolf Kempe, Berlin Philharmonic, St. Hedwig Cathedral Choir, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Grmmer (1955, EMI, 76'). We got to the downbeat of O schne Nacht, and he started to cry. Revisions led to an So he would prepare obsessively, anticipating issues with balance, pitch, and rhythm, and so on. Each movement is appreciably slower, often strikingly so the opening sprawls to 1210 compared to 925 in his 1943 NBC broadcast, and the finale to 1305 vs. 940 in 1943. After a long hiatus, the sporadic recording history of the German Requiem resumed in curious fashion in 1955, when two mono LP sets were recorded at the same location by the same orchestra and chorus but released on competing European labels. He has freedom because of the rhythmic discipline.. The last movement to be added the fifth, in which a solo soprano sings of a mother's comfort is generally attributed to the memory of Brahms' mother, but less as an immediate response to her death than a later tribute. The most palpable point of distinction is with the far more prevalent Catholic requiem Mass. 2012-2023, Chorus America. Craig Jessop, Utah Symphony, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Nathan Gunn, Janice Chadler (1999, Telarc; 69'). Composers of Latin requiems could inject themselves only partially into the final product, as each section had to illustrate, if not advance, the dogmatic progression as well as the prescribed wording of each required section a mournful Requiem aeternam, a fiery Dies irae, a somber Rex tremendae, a fearful Lacrymosa, a comforting Agnus Dei, etc. WebA German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. The fidelity is only fair, but it far outstrips Furtwngler's other extant recording at the 1947 Lucerne Festival (with Hans Hotter and Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, also on Music & Arts). In Powerpoint style Dr. Ted gives us an introduction to Brahms greatest choral work. WebThis page lists all sheet music of Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. Hermann Abendroth, Radio Berlin Orchestra and Chorus, Heinz Friedrich, Lisbeth Schmidt-Glanzel (1952, Tahra CD, 76'). He changed our profession, he changed choral music in the United States of America, says Ann Howard Jones, a symposium faculty member who assisted Shaw with the Atlanta Symphony Chorus in the 1980s and 90s and went on to direct choral activities at Boston University. Take, for example, the opening phrase, "Selig sind." April 10, 1868. [All listings below are in the format of: conductor, orchestra, chorus, baritone soloist, soprano soloist (year, source, timing in minutes). Far more successful was the composer's April 10, 1868 Bremen performance of a six-movement version. The rest of the year was preoccupied with concerts and other compositions, but Brahms returned to the Requiem in early 1866. WebA German Requiem, Op. In advance of a 1972 performance of the Brahms Requiem, he wrote to the Atlanta Symphony Chorus, As artistsand as human beingsour concern is not with how we feel about death or the textual imagery of the German Requiem, but how Brahms felt about these things. Many commentators have noted with great admiration Brahms' deep knowledge of the Bible. This overview is For Shaw, rehearsal time was precious. One doesnt have time not to do that, she said of his meticulous planning. Neither makes much grammatical sense nor fits the rising notes comfortably, both begin with a sudden "bl" sound rather than the soft "s" that gently launches the original, the sibilance falls on the only syllable lacking one in the original, and the extended third note of the music sounds more soothing with Brahms' sustained "in" than with an "ar" or "ey" vowel. Martin Emmis has noted its broad structural symmetry, in which the central movements IV and V convey the key theme of consolation; II, III and VI move from images of death and despair to triumph and hope; and I and VII close the circle by blessing both mourners and the departed with common text in the same key. The event was poorly publicized, so the audience, according to Jessop, consisted only of Shaws wife Caroline, a few other people, and a cat. During this period of his career, Brahms was paying close attention to Bach, Schtz, and the Lutheran choral tradition. Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Schwartzkopf (1961, EMI, 69'). Beyond the expected mixed reaction from pro- and anti-Wagner partisans, for whom Brahms soon would become a symbol of conservative tradition, the performance ended in disaster, when the percussionist apparently mistook a dynamic indication in the score as ff and drowned out the concluding third movement fugue with a deafening pedal point. Its greatest message, says Musgrave, is a message of comfort, especially apparent in the fifth movement soprano solo, which quotes Isaiah: I will comfort you as a mother would. Although Brahms did not like people asking him about it, Musgrave says everyone in the composers circle believed he wrote this movement for his own mother, who died in February 1868. For Brahms work on the German Requiem was cathartic; he told friends upon its completion: "Now I am consoled. Murgrave even questions the relationship of the fifth movement to Brahms' late mother, and suggests that it was simply too personal and intimate to have been given public exposure until after the success of the rest of the work had been assured. While sorting through Schumann's estate, Brahms came upon a bare reference to a German Requiem and felt compelled to take up the task. There was ample precedent for that approach, but none among major religious works of the time.
brahms requiem analysis