Other Sixteen Edition Recordings on CORO
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CORO The Sixteen Edition Other Sixteen Edition recordings on CORO Heinrich Schütz Victoria - Requiem 1605 Musikalische Exequien, Deutsches Magnificat, Priest, scholar and singer, this remarkable Herr nun lässest du, Spaniard epitomised Vater unser the emotion and fervour of "The sombre colours of Renaissance Europe. Schütz's moving funeral Victoria's lavish music are finely brought Requiem became out in this collection." his most famous and the guardian revered work. cor16036 corsacd16033 Music from the Chapel Royal à la Gloire de Dieu 'The King's Musick' Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms 17th century anthems Poulenc: Sept Répons written for the Chapel des Ténèbres Royal by Cooke, Blow Tippett: Five Negro and Humfrey, including Spirituals several first recordings of pieces probably not "...deeply committed heard since the time of and technically brilliant" their writing. gramophone cor16041 cor160013 To find out more about The Sixteen, concert tours, and to buy CDs, visit www.thesixteen.com cor16050 This performance of Brahms' German Requiem is a direct result Ein Deutsches Requiem - of our association with the Southbank Centre in London; it Johannes Brahms opened our first season there in October 2006. Many of you will see it as quite a departure from our customary Renaissance and 1 Selig sind, die da Leid tragen (chorus) 9.46 Baroque repertoire but, since Brahms had been so influenced by 2 Denn alles Fleisch ist wie Gras (chorus) 14.50 the Protestant church music of the great German master of the 3 early Baroque, Heinrich Schütz, the Requiem seemed to be perfect Herr, lehre doch mich (bass/chorus) 10.22 material for The Sixteen. 4 Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (chorus) 6.27 Brahms' Requiem is one of the great choral masterpieces of 5 Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit (soprano/chorus) 6.21 all time, and when I came across this version for piano duet by 6 Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt (bass/chorus) 11.08 Brahms himself (known most aptly as the ‘London’ version), I was 7 fascinated to see what it could offer. From my schooldays I have Selig sind die Toten (chorus) 10.23 adored the rich and varied orchestration of the Requiem and I, like Total playing time 69.52 many of you I suspect, was wary of this very much scaled-down version. At the request of his publisher, it had been arranged for piano duet by Brahms himself, specifically to promote the work outside his native Germany. It was in this actual version that it received its British première, albeit at a private function, in the home of Sir Henry Thompson. The Sixteen Our performance, which I decided to record ‘as live’ the day after our Southbank concert, benefits from the use of an 1872 Bösendorfer piano, thus allowing us to experience the sort Soprano Julie Cooper (& soloist), Grace Davidson, Alison Hill, Kirsty Hopkins, of sound Brahms would have heard. I am so grateful to Simon Neal for lending us his prize Elin Manahan Thomas, Charlotte Mobbs, Rebecca Outram possession, and I do genuinely feel that the sound of this instrument is a revelation. Brahms did not simply make a piano reduction from his orchestral score - he made one or two adjustments Alto David Clegg, Sally Dunkley, Kim Porter, Matthew Venner to bring out the piano colour; what we may lose in orchestration we undoubtedly gain by Tenor Simon Berridge, Mark Dobell, David Roy, Julian Stocker hearing the brilliant choral effects that so often become clouded in the full version. In addition to all this, we can enjoy the amazing solo singing that The Sixteen seems to produce every year, Bass Eamonn Dougan (& soloist), Jonathan Arnold, Ben Davies, in this case the intensely musical performances of Julie Cooper and Eamonn Dougan. With all Timothy Jones, Robert Macdonald, Stuart Young these factors I do believe we arrive at the heart of Brahms' very human Requiem. Piano Gary Cooper, Christopher Glynn Bösendorfer piano of 1872 kindly loaned by Simon Neal and tuned by Michael Lewis 2 3 movement is rooted in music written Gott lässt walten, although Brahms’s Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) around the time of Robert Schumann’s reticence again precludes confirmation tragic demise in 1856, while much of of the allusion. In any case, the initial EIN DE UTSCH E S RE QUI E M op. 45 the rest was composed in the aftermath choral melody of the funereal second of the death of Christiane Brahms, the movement, haunting and terrifying by composer’s beloved mother, nine years turn, draws on the same succession ohannes Brahms was one of the his own German-language Requiem. later. While Brahms himself remained of pitches, encouraging us to hear first musicians to revive the works Rather than presenting Schütz’s characteristically tight-lipped, those it as a dark counterpart to the first Jof Schütz, which had fallen into music as an antiquarian curiosity, close to him were convinced that his movement. The prevailing gloom neglect before the seventeenth century Brahms’s gesture stresses the cultural Requiem honoured the memory of eventually gives way to the radiant was out. In his capacity as conductor continuities that link the two composers. both. Yet, as many critics have noted, sunlight beamed forth by the first of of the Viennese Singakademie, Brahms While Brahms’s post-Enlightenment the work offers more comfort to the the Requiem’s Handelian fugal passages, staged a series of concerts presenting scepticism may seem to be at odds with living than it advocates for the dead: a transformation effected by Brahms’s choral works by Schütz and J. S. Bach Schütz’s devout faith, even the starkest if the hell of the Thirty Years War had dramatic treatment of the verse 'But in 1863-4. While Viennese audiences contrasts between the two composers’ become nothing more than a remote the word of the Lord endureth for were predictably unenthusiastic, his religious and musical idioms can be historical backdrop for nineteenth- ever'. The third movement follows a labours were not in vain: Schütz’s reconciled within the broad historical century Germans, then philosophical similar trajectory: human ephemerality mastery of counterpoint, texture, and sweep of Protestantism: taking Luther’s and social developments ensured that is contrasted with divine immortality, text-setting doubtless appealed to Bible as an exemplar of unorthodoxy, heaven had receded into the distance minor with major, soloist with chorus, Brahms’s compositional instincts at a both Schütz and Brahms negotiated too. Brahms’s primary concern and antiphony with magisterial time when he was working on the between the national and the universal for those who remain on Earth is counterpoint. large-scale choral work that would as well as the human and the divine. evident from the text he chose for Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen make his international reputation. As if The drawn-out genesis of Brahms’s the first movement, delivered by the brings some welcome respite in the to acknowledge his influence, Brahms German Requiem was typical of a chorus with hushed tenderness and form of a charming Schubertian borrowed the verse 'Selig sind die Toten' composer whose dogged perfectionism achingly beautiful suspensions. The Ländler before Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit, from Part III of Schütz’s Musikalische seemed to intensify in proportion with instrumental introduction outlines written almost two years later than Exequien (available on CORO as the size of the challenge that faced what many believe to be a reference to the rest of the work, introduces the COR16036) for the last movement of him. The sinister 'march' of the second the Lutheran chorale Wer nur den lieben soprano soloist as a maternal figure 4 5 who brings comfort to the sorrowful. Reinthaler, who complained in a letter the piano was a mainstay of almost which it emerged. The taut opening of Denn wir haben to the composer that “the central point every bourgeois German household, Brahms’s piano arrangement also keine bleibende Statt gives way to about which all else turns is missing-- duet arrangements were extremely found favour with choral societies Brahms’s thrilling tone-painting of namely, redemption through the death popular; they often provided the only and facilitated the international the resurrection of the dead, marking of our Lord.” In Bremen, this omission means by which interested amateurs transmission of his music at a time the Requiem’s dramatic highlight; the was rectified by the insertion of could acquaint themselves with the when his name was not sufficiently ensuing fugue reaches heavenwards I Know that My Redeemer Liveth from latest orchestral music from outside well known to guarantee the provision by miraculously extending the three- Handel’s Messiah halfway through the region. Although many composers of orchestral forces overseas. In 1871, note choral motive that opened the the Requiem, a practice that became delegated the transcription of their the piano-accompanied Requiem whole work. In the wake of such a something of a local tradition. But a music to their publishers’ underlings, was given its English première under stirring set-piece, Selig sind die Toten letter from Brahms to his publisher Brahms took pride in carrying out the the baton of Brahms’s friend Julius may seem anticlimactic despite – or Melchior Rieter-Biedermann suggests work himself, and his arrangements are Stockhausen, who also sang the even owing to – its neat symmetry with that those who assumed that the work invariably idiomatic and faithful to the baritone solo part, at the residence of the first movement. Having depicted was a traditional Requiem manqué spirit of the score rather than slavish to the noted surgeon and polymath Sir the transfiguration that might await us, were missing the point: “It can in no its letter.