Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia

• 1 I. Selig sind, die da Leid tragen 08:14
• 2 II. Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras 14:17
• 3 III. Herr, lehre doch mich 09:55
• 4 IV. Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen 04:56
• 5 V. Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit 07:13
• 6 VI. Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt 11:50
• 7 VII. Selig sind die Toten 10:23
• Total Runtime 01:06:48

Info for Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem

“Uniquely amongst the great Requiems, the transcendent German Requiem is set to Old Testament texts, whose wisdom and power were of great meaning to Brahms. The result is an edifice of awesome majesty and luminescent beauty,” said Music Director Ignat Solzhenitsyn.

This is a work that takes the noun in its title from the Roman Mass for the Dead, yet is itself totally nonliturgical in design and function. It is a setting of Biblical and Apocryphal texts, and although some of them come from the New Testament, it meticulously avoids any mention of the name of Christ.

Through tender and intense music, innovative rhythmic elements that inspired future composers, and unusual orchestrations (including the harp, an instrument rarely found in Brahms’s works, and the absence of violins in the first movement), a message is conveyed of compensatory confidence in the eventual surcease of pain and the soothing of worldly suffering. Incarnations of ideas originally meant for his first symphony also come to life here, as they do in his First Piano Concerto.

Whatever the individual listener’s view on questions of body and soul, of here and hereafter, Brahms makes an expressive–and indeed moral–impact that, like all great art, goes beyond speculation.

Randall Scarlata, baritone
Susanna Phillips, soprano
Choral Arts Society
Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia
Ignat Solzhenitsyn, conductor

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