Palace Concerts

#Brahms125

Artists

Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España

Miguel Ángel García Cañamero, Choir director

Katharina Konradi, soprano

Peter Mattei, baritone

David Afkham, conductor

Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45

A Requiem without Liturgy

A work of complexity, which went through various stages over more than a decade (devised in the mid-1950s, prompted by the death of his mother in 1865, definitively dealt with in the following three years), Brahms conceived his Requiem on the fringes of the liturgy of any Church, although its texts are taken from the Lutheran Bible and there are in it such German forms and elements (the chorale, the fugue, the lied) that its title is more than justified. Not only is it a German Requiem, but it is possibly the most German of Requiems ever written. A monumental and humanist work, which from afar seems to be based on the rhetoric and counterpoint of Schütz and Bach, was born instead with the universal vocation of comforting those who suffer, wherever they are. One of the summits of sacred music of all times.

Concert with no interval

Estimated duration: 70 minutes