Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem

Before conquering concert halls with his symphonies,Johannes Brahms made a name for himself as a choralconductor. He led vocal ensembles in his hometown ofHamburg, in Detmold and Vienna, enriching therepertoire with his own music. Composed between 1865and 1868, Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem)is his most extensive choral work and a milestone in hisartistic development.In this work, Brahms combined text passages from theOld and New Testaments in an unconventional way: the'target' of the text and music is no longer the deceased,for whose salvation we pray, but the survivor, who is tobe consoled. He thus turned away from ecclesiasticalconventions and created a very atypical requiem whichhas nothing to do with the Catholic Church's often-setLatin requiem mass. Instead, it was conceived from theoutset for the concert hall or church concerts. Musicallythe Requiem draws from earlier traditions in a highlypersonal way while remaining firmly in a Romanticchoral idiom, at times embedded in lush orchestraltextures.After countless acclaimed recordings devoted to thereligious music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, MasaakiSuzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan now present theirunique vision of Brahms's masterpiece.