BRAHMSIANA: A GERMAN REQUIEM

It feels great to be able to clearly hear the sounds of Saturday 14 March 7.30pm life again Federation Concert Hall Hobart - J. Howard, Sandy Bay Eivind Aadland conductor 4. Chorus June Tyzack chorusmaster Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen Visit mbhc.com.au today Siobhan Stagg soprano (How lovely are your dwellings) James Clayton baritone 5. Solo (Soprano) with Chorus to book your free annual TSO Chorus Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit hearing test (You are sorrowful now) BRAHMS 6. Solo (Baritone) with Chorus Ein deutsches Requiem Denn wir haben hier keine bleibende Statt (For we have no permanent home here) 1. Chorus 7. Chorus Selig sind, die da Leid tragen Selig sind die Toten (Blessed are the dead) (Blessed are they that mourn) 2. Chorus Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras Sung in German with English surtitles. (For all flesh is as grass) Surtitles by June Tyzack. 3. Solo (Baritone) with Chorus This concert will be performed without an interval. Herr, lehre doch mich (Lord, teach me) It will end at approximately 8.50pm.

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27 Eivind Aadland June Tyzack Siobhan Stagg James Clayton Eivind Aadland is one of Norway’s most respected June Tyzack was engaged as Chorusmaster of After graduating from the University of , In 2020 James Clayton sings the title role in conductors. He was Chief Conductor and Artistic the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Chorus in soprano Siobhan Stagg participated in the Salzburg Macbeth for State of South Australia; for Leader of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra 2001, following a career in Sydney with Opera Festival’s Young Singer Project and was an ensemble West Australian Opera he sings Alfio in Cavalleria for seven seasons from 2004, during which Australia, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra member of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. Recent rusticana, Tonio in Pagliacci and the title role in time he conducted the complete Beethoven and the Sydney Conservatorium. Through her successes include the title role in Cendrillon for Elijah. His concert appearances include Brahms’ and Mahler symphony cycles. In 2020 he takes initiative, the Chorus profile has developed from Lyric Opera of Chicago, Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) Requiem for the Tasmanian Symphony, Carmina up the position of Chief Conductor and Artistic an occasional concert with the TSO to a series of for the Royal Opera Covent Garden, Sophie (Der Burana and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis for the Director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. concerts throughout the year. She has cemented Rosenkavalier) for the Opernhaus Zurich, Mélisande West Australian Symphony, Messiah for New His extensive work with Scandinavian orchestras relationships with interstate symphonic choirs (Pelléas et Mélisande) for Victorian Opera, Pamina Zealand Symphony and an Opera Gala for the includes regular guest engagements with the enabling the TSO Chorus to sing the major choral and Gilda (Rigoletto) for the Hamburg State Opera, Queensland Symphony. In 2018 he sang Marcello Oslo and Bergen Philharmonics, the Stavanger repertoire with Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Najade (Ariadne auf Naxos) for the Bavarian State (La bohème), Escamillo (), Leporello (Don Symphony, the Gothenburg Symphony and the Victorian Opera, Adelaide Festival Chorus and the Opera and her debut at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence Giovanni) and The Forester (The Cunning Little Swedish Chamber Orchestra. In addition, he West Australian Symphony Orchestra Chorus, in performances of Mozart’s Requiem staged by Vixen) for West Australian Opera; he appeared in has conducted acclaimed productions of Don which included performances in Hong Kong. Romeo Castellucci. Her roles also include Zerlina concert with the Tasmanian and West Australian Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte and She has created opportunities for the Chorus to (), Micaëla (Carmen) and Musetta (La symphony orchestras and Orchestra Wellington. Die Fledermaus for Den Norske Opera, Oslo. He participate in massed choir concerts in Berlin and bohème). On the concert platform this season she In 2019 he sang Germont (La traviata), Judge has also worked extensively in the Far East and Barcelona, and in 2019 conducted the TSO Chorus sings Strauss’ Four Last Songs (Royal Philharmonic Turpin (Sweeney Todd) and the title role in Australia. He is a frequent visitor to the WDR in an all-Australian a cappella program whilst Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis), Beethoven’s Missa Macbeth in Perth, The Forester in Adelaide and Symphony Orchestra Köln, the National Orchestra overseas. The TSO Chorus features in Roxanna Solemnis (Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Donald Peter (Hansel and Gretel) in Melbourne. He made of Belgium and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Panufnik’s Ever Us, commissioned for a concert Runnicles) and Symphony No 9 (Bamberger his debut as Baron Douphol in La He has also worked with Orchestre national in the Berlin Philharmonie in 2020 celebrating the Symphoniker/Nathalie Stutzmann), Verdi’s Requiem traviata (in Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour) and du Capitole de Toulouse, Gürzenich-Orchester 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. She has (West Australian Symphony Orchestra/Asher his Japanese debut as Don Alfonso in Cosi fan Köln, Strasbourg Philharmonic, Lausanne and devised and directed cutting-edge a cappella TSO Fisch), Ravel’s Shéhérazade (Stavanger Symphony tutte for Biwako Hall. Concert appearances include Scottish Chamber Orchestras and the symphony Chorus programs for several festivals, including Orchestra/Marc Soustrot), Debussy’s Ariettes Oubliées Messiah and Le damnation de (New Zealand orchestras of Melbourne, Tasmania, Finnish Radio, in the Spiegeltent for Ten Days on the Island, (Orchestre national de Lyon/Karl-Heinz Steffens), Symphony Orchestra), Haydn’s Mass in Time of Bamberg, Staatskapelle Weimar, SWR Stuttgart, Dark Mofo, Synaesthesia and Synaesthesia+, Mahler’s Symphony No 2 (Seoul Philharmonic War and Puccini’s Messa di Gloria (Tasmanian and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. and Mofo in both Hobart and Launceston, and Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä) and Bach’s St Matthew Symphony Orchestra) and Mozart’s Mass in C In addition to his career as a conductor, Eivind created programs suited to regional touring. She Passion (Gürzenich-Orchester Köln/Nicholas Collon). Minor, Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 and Verdi’s Aadland is a devoted collector of, and authority is responsible for the surtitles for all TSO choral She also appears at the Adelaide Festival in further Requiem (West Australian Symphony Orchestra). on, contemporary art. His private collection concerts. staged performances of Mozart’s Requiem and tours encompasses works in the diverse media of France with Ensemble Pygmalion/Raphaël Pichon to painting, photography, video and installation. launch their recently released album of Mozart Arias.

28 29 JOHANNES BRAHMS Ein deutsches Requiem (1833-1897)

German Requiem is one of Brahms’ most with what happens after death and the Day of Apersonal and revealing compositions. First Judgement. For Brahms the last trumpet (or, in performed officially in Bremen Cathedral on Good German, last trombone) heralds not judgement, Friday 1868, it quickly won general acceptance but the resurrection of the last day. This is as far throughout Germany and even further afield. as Brahms goes towards the Christian message Brahms had ‘arrived’ as a major composer even of hope. Elsewhere he is concerned mainly with before he had written any of his symphonies. consoling the bereaved who stay behind, facing The Requiem is Brahms’ largest treatment bereavement and their own inescapable death. of man’s attitude to death, a subject which There is no entreaty, no prayer for mercy. preoccupied him throughout his adult life. Here, Brahms denied that his Requiem applied to any more than anywhere else, he lets us see his individual. Nevertheless, under the impact of his metaphysical, even religious outlook. As his first mentor Schumann’s death in 1856, Brahms took venture into large choral forms, the Requiem also up the rejected slow movement of his D-minor shows how thoroughly this largely self-taught Piano Concerto (No 1) and reworked it as the dark composer had steeped himself in the music of the and implacable saraband which begins the second past, emerging as a conservative master of choral movement, ‘For all flesh is as grass’. Then, in idioms. 1865, his beloved mother died. Brahms calls it A German Requiem because the The Requiem was completed in the summer of TSO Chorus words – from Luther’s Bible – are in German. He 1866 in Switzerland. It consisted of six movements, uses the name ‘Requiem’ only in a very general predominantly dark in colour, and with a single The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Chorus is performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic sense; this is no liturgical requiem and has no baritone soloist. An initial performance in Vienna an auditioned chorus with 80 members. Founded Orchestra and Jaap van Zweden in collaboration connection with the forms of worship of any in 1867 was a failure – it was under-rehearsed, in 1992 to enable concert performances of with WASO Chorus, and the Orquestra simfònica church. Brought up a Protestant, Brahms lost and the scoring was revealed as unsatisfactory, opera, the Chorus repertoire has since expanded de Barcelona i nacional de Catalunya Orquestra his faith early, and was not a Christian believer. especially in the third movement. Brahms to cover all genres and periods, with Bach’s and Berlin Radio Orchestra in two massed choir His admirer Dvořák once exclaimed: ‘Such a retouched these problem areas before conducting Passions and Michaela Gleave’s A Galaxy of Suns events conducted by Simon Halsey. The Chorus great man, such a great soul! And he believes in the official first performance in Bremen Cathedral. for chorus and smartphone app demonstrating showcased three contemporary Australian nothing!’ After the Bremen performance, Brahms seems to the extremes. The TSO Chorus regularly joins composers in an a cappella concert in Barcelona In spite of this, his spiritual life was guided and have felt that something was still lacking in the forces with interstate choirs and has performed in 2019, conducted by Chorusmaster June formed by Biblical perspectives on life and death. overall balance of the work. He added the soprano major choral works with the Sydney Symphony Tyzack. Locally, the flexibility of the chorus is The texts which spoke to him most strongly solo with chorus which, with its explicit reference Orchestra, West Australian Symphony Orchestra evident with unconventional performances of counselled contemplation, resignation and to the mother comforting her child, is conceived (WASO), Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and a cappella programs in the major festivals and patience in the face of death. Brahms’ thought as a memorial to Brahms’ own mother. In this Orchestra , working with acclaimed traditional repertoire toured to the regional is mainly pessimistic, but it is a pessimism form the work was performed in February 1869 at conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, centres. Masterclasses with international artists shot through with gleams of hope – not the Leipzig (stronghold of the Mendelssohn faction) Sir Charles Mackerras, David Robertson and are also a feature of the Chorus year. Please visit Christian hope of redemption and resurrection which remained alone in Germany in failing to Asher Fisch. Further afield, the TSO Chorus has tsochorus.com.au for more information. (Christ is nowhere mentioned in Brahms’ texts), appreciate the German Requiem. but the achievement, through resignation, of Brahms can be described as a Protestant composer eternal bliss. The Catholic requiem is concerned in spite of his lack of religiosity. His Protestantism

30 31 appears both in his choice of Biblical texts and in leading the people, a personal voice to which the the musical ancestry of his style. The influence choir responds by repeating and underlining its here of JS Bach was paramount. Another influence utterances. was the music of the 17th-century German Brahms was never more personal, nor more true to composer Heinrich Schütz. Brahms may have his nature than in this ambitiously-scaled work. It known Schütz’s serene Funeral Music, which has has remained a litmus test of attitudes to Brahms’ some texts in common with his own Requiem. art. The pro-Wagner faction – of which George Brahms’ knowledge of the music of the past gave Bernard Shaw made himself the spokesman in discipline and form to Romantic impulses in his England – could never accept its creative musical musical style. The richness of A German Requiem conservatism, nor, perhaps, emotional restraint. lies in ardent Romantic feeling being poured into For others, the effect of this masterful meditation traditional forms. on death, dissolved into music by an ultimately Unlike Brahms’ unaccompanied motets, his lonely man, can be overwhelmingly moving. Requiem makes no parade of contrapuntal Abridged from a note by David Garrett © 1989 learning, and he confines himself throughout to a single choir in four parts only. Generally speaking, The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first performed this work when he resorts to fugal writing in this work, it with conductor John Nicholls, soloists Gwyneth Dixon and is superbly apt, even in the passage which ends Lyall Bevan, and the Hobart Choral and Philharmonic Society the third movement. This contains a powerful in Hobart on 2 November 1960. The most recent performance piece of musical symbolism: just as the souls of was with Marko Letonja, Nicole Car, and the the righteous are described as being held in the TSO Chorus in Hobart on 8 December 2012. hand of God, so the two separate but concurrent fugues, one choral, one orchestral, are held together by the mighty D major pedal in the bass. At the time he composed the Requiem, Brahms’ only large-scale orchestral work was the D-minor Piano Concerto, whose scoring had given him trouble. The orchestration of A German Requiem lacks the subtlety of Brahms’ later symphonic works; a very few pages even show Would YOU like to be on stage singing with the signs of misjudgment. The overall effect of the TSO and TSO Chorus? Auditions for the TSO Chorus orchestration is sombre. Like Cherubini before him and Fauré after, he responds to the service will be held on Saturday 28 March. for the dead by using violas and lower strings in many places to the exclusion of the violins, and Visit https://tsochorus.com.au/join-us/ in the first movement he also banishes the bright for further details or contact the Chorus Coordinator on tones of clarinets and trumpets. The relation of the [email protected] 0488 324 421 vocal soloists to the choir is that of a single voice

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