BRAHMS REQUIEM

R E CORDED SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 2018 AT 2 PM SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 2018 AT 7 PM WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL

GRANT GERSHON Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director

LOS ANGELES MASTER CHORALE LOS ANGELES MASTER CHORALE ORCHESTRA

GRANT GERSHON, conductor JEANINE DE BIQUE, soprano JUSTIN HOPKINS, bass-baritone

where you go (West Coast Premiere) David Lang (b. 1957)

Soloists: Claire Fedoruk, Kelci Hahn, Suzanne Waters, sopranos Callista Hoffman-Campbell, Jessie Shulman, Tracy Van Fleet, altos Charlie Kim, Michael Lichtenauer, Jimmy Traum, tenors John Buffett, Scott Graff, Adrien Redford, basses

Ein deutsches Requiem Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) I. Selig sind, die da Leid tragen (Blessed are those who bear suffering) II. Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras (For all flesh, it is as grass) III. Herr, lehre doch mich (Lord, teach me) IV. Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (How lovely are thy dwellings) V. Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit (You now have sadness) VI. Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt (For here we have no lasting place) VII. Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herrn sterben (Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord)

This performance was supported by Dr. Annette Ermshar and Mr. Dan Monahan, Jane and Edward McAniff, Jenny Soonjin Kim and Chip Baik. los angeles master chorale

SOPRANO ALTO TENOR BASS April Amante Garineh Avakian Matthew Brown Michael Bannett Tamara Bevard Lesili Beard Bradley Chapman Mark Beasom Christina Bristow Rose Beattie Adam Faruqi Michael Blanchard Emma-Grace Dunbar Leanna Brand Timothy Gonzales Reid Bruton Hayden Eberhart Aleta Braxton Steven Harms John Buffett Claire Fedoruk Monika Bruckner Blake Howard Tim Campbell Rachelle Fox Janelle DeStefano Jon Lee Keenan David Castillo Harriet Fraser Amy Fogerson Charlie Kim Kevin Dalbey Alannah Garnier Michele Hemmings Shawn Kirchner Dylan Gentile Kelci Hahn Saundra Hall Hill Bryan Lane Will Goldman Ayana Haviv Callista Hoffman-Campbell Charles Lane Abdiel Gonzalez Marie Hodgson Leslie Inman Sobol Karen Hogle Brown Shabnam Kalbasi Michael Lichtenauer Scott Graff Elissa Johnston Sharmila G. Lash JJ Lopez Stephen Grimm Virenia Lind Sarah Lynch Sal Malaki David Dong-Geun Kim Deborah Mayhan Adriana Manfredi Matthew Miles Luc Kleiner Caroline McKenzie Cynthia Marty Anthony Ray David Kress Beth Peregrine Margaurite Mathis-Clark Todd Strange Chung Uk Lee Anna Schubert Julia Metzler Matthew Thomas Scott Lehmkuhl Holly Sedillos Alice Kirwan Murray Jimmy Traum Edward Levy Carrah Stamatakis Jessie Shulman Matthew Tresler Ben Lin Courtney Taylor Niké St. Clair Nate Widelitz Brett McDermid Rebecca Tomlinson Nancy Sulahian Steve Pence Suzanne Waters Ilana Summers Jim Raycroft Elyse Willis Kimberly Switzer Adrien Redford Sunjoo Yeo Tracy Van Fleet Vincent Robles Mark Edward Smith Shuo Zhai

The singers of the Los Angeles Master Chorale are represented by the American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO, Elyse Willis, AGMA Delegate. los angeles master chorale orchestra

VIOLINS I VIOLA S OBOES TROMBONES Roberto Cani Shawn Mann Jennifer Cullinan William Booth Concertmaster Principal Principal Principal Joel Pargman, Andrew Picken Michele Forrest Al Veeh Associate Concertmaster Associate Principal Terry Cravens

Margaret Wooten Brett Banducci CLARINETS Assistant Concertmaster Diana Wade Gary Bovyer TUBA Florence Titmus Karolina Naziemiec Principal Doug Tornquist Leslie Katz Alma Fernandez Michael Grego Principal Nina Evtuhov Elizabeth Wilson Elizabeth Hedman Kate Reddish Carrie Kennedy BASSOONS HARP Liliana Filipovic C E LLOS William Wood JoAnn Turovsky Nicole Bush Cecilia Tsan Principal Principal

Tamara Hatwan Principal Alex Rosales Garcia Armen Anassian Delores Bing Theresa Treuenfels T IMPANI Theresa Dimond Associate Principal Contrabassoon Principal Nadine Hall VIOLINS I I Dane Little Ana Landauer H ORNS Maggie Edmondson ORCHESTRA Principal Steve Becknell Ira Glansbeek PERSONNEL Cynthia Moussas Principal MANAGER Associate Principal Nathan Campbell Linda Stone BASSES Danielle Ondarza Brady Steel Steve Scharf Don Ferrone Paul Klintworth Anna Kostyuchek Principal LIBRARIAN

Mui Yee Chu KT Somero Peter Doubrovsky TRUMPETS Juliann French Associate Principal David Washburn Jean Sudbury Tim Eckert Principal Colleen Coomber Jeff Bandy Jennifer Marotta Kristen Fife

FLUTES Geri Rotella Principal Lisa Edelstein Julie Burkert Piccolo

The players of the Los Angeles Master Chorale Orchestra are represented by the American Federation of Musicians Local 47. Guest artists

JEANINE DE BIQUE JUSTIN HOPKINS SOPRANO BASS- BARITONE

Hailing from Trinidad and Tobago, soprano Jeanine Bass-baritone Justin Hopkins is a young De Bique’s most recent engagements include performer in increasing demand nationally and Helena/Midsummer Night’s Dream at Deutsche internationally. Hailed by Mark Swed of the LA Oper Berlin, Susanna/Le Nozze di Figaro at San Times for his “commanding presence” and Francisco Opera, concerts with the Budapest “beautifully focused bass-baritone”, he has been Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer in New York and featured in such concert halls and theaters as Los Angeles, Handel‘s Jephtha with Richard Egarr Carnegie Hall; Walt Disney Hall; Symphony Hall, at the BBC Proms, Messiah with the Atlanta Boston; Queen Elizabeth Hall, London; and Symphony Orchestra, Rodelinda/Rodelinda at Opéra Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels. de Lille and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Mr. Hopkins made his role debut at the Aida/Caruso a Cuba at De Nationale Opera Glimmerglass Festival in 2019 as Joe in Show Amsterdam, Mahler’s Symphony No 2 with Tugan Boat to critical acclaim, and is currently engaged Sokhiev in Toulouse and Paris, the Symphony No 4 as a member of the ensemble at Opera with Teodor Currentzis and MusicAeterna, the Vlaanderen in Antwerp, Belgium. He made his Los Symphony No 8 with Marin Alsop and the Chicago Angeles debut with Los Angeles Chamber Symphony Orchestra and Annio/La Clemenza di Orchestra in 2017 as Stephen Kumalo in Lost In Tito at the Salzburg Festival and in Amsterdam. The Stars, as well as the bass soloist in the Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with the orchestra. Projects in 2020/21 include opera appearances at Mr. Hopkins is a frequent soloist with The Boston Theater an der Wien, Maria Reiner/The Sound of Pops, The Philly POPS, and Grand Rapids Music at Houston Grand Opera, Agathe/Der Symphony Pops. He placed 2nd in the 2012 Lotte Freischütz with Konzerthausorchester Berlin Lenya Competition. and Christoph Eschenbach and a return to the Salzburg Festival. www.justinhopkinsopera.com www.jeaninedebique.com

BRAHMS REQUIEM

Questions and Answers

A NEW CONTEXT FOR THE BRAHMS REQUIEM

by Thomas May

At first glance, the choice of a Requiem as the central work for the Grammy-winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth and a violinist. the season’s closing program may seem a bit … somber. But She has gained cultural visibility beyond the new classical and Johannes Brahms’s choral masterpiece — which also happens choral spheres for her role in the Mozart in the Jungle series to be his longest and largest score — is no ordinary Requiem. and for a collaboration with the rapper Kanye West. Fly Away I For one thing, the deeply personal approach that led Brahms to dates from 2012 and was written for the International Orange craft his own, non-traditional sequence of texts means that this Chorale of San Francisco. Framed by an intoned solo tenor is an anti-doctrinaire Requiem, with no interest in salvation or line, the piece begins with an improvisatory, intimate sequence damnation but in the work of memory on the part of the living. of solo voices singing the phrase “I’ll fly away,” followed by the altos’ repeated chanting (“I went the way”) — to be sung And for anyone who loves the art of choral singing, the Brahms “almost like speaking, very naturally, like one of those late-night Requiem commands a particularly sacred status, so to conversations.” When it reaches full force, Shaw instructs the speak. As a compositional achievement, it was a longstanding ensemble to create a sound “like velvet concrete.” Shaw makes preoccupation of the legendary choral conductor Robert Shaw, striking and effective use of the juxtaposition between spare, a transformative figure for the choral scene in the United States. monotone lines and harmonic abundance. Shaw planned to record a new English version he had lovingly prepared at the very end of his life but died in January 1999, only David Lang, another Pulitzer Prize winner (in 2008 for the little a few weeks before that project could be realized. match girl passion, part of the Master Chorale’s repertoire), composed where you go for chamber choir in 2015 to mark the Grant Gershon, the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s Kiki & David 75th anniversary of the Tanglewood Music Center. Gindler Artistic Director, decided to program a pair of short choral works by living American composers as a kind of prelude, where you go “is a rewriting of what I remember as my favorite suggesting a contemporary context in which we will then hear part of the biblical Book of Ruth, the famous lines where Brahms’s magnificent score. In contrast to the choral and Ruth tells [her mother-in-law] Naomi that she will stay with symphonic forces of the latter, the pieces by Caroline Shaw her forever,” writes the composer. “I say ‘what I remember’ and David Lang are both a cappella. “Both are open-ended as because in my memory the book is a beautiful statement of well, asking questions,” Gershon says. “This performance of the love, friendship, and devotion, from one person to another. I Brahms is the answer to the questions that the first two pieces always forget that the book is mostly a series of legal arguments, will raise.” about how someone claims land, or an inheritance, or a wife, or a family. Ruth’s simple desire to follow her heart sets in The winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music in 2013 for her a motion an examination of a complicated chain of interlocking cappella Partita for 8 Voices, Caroline Shaw is also a singer in

LOS ANGELES MASTER CHORALE PERFORMANCES MAGAZINE BRAHMS REQUIEM

obligations and overlapping responsibilities. That pretty much the Passions of J.S. Bach and the Musikalische Exequien of describes my piece as well.” Gershon values the “emotional and Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672). Los Angeles Master Chorale bittersweet” qualities of where you go, a piece which “seems to audiences are familiar with a contemporary manifestation of ask the same questions that the Brahms Requiem asks, just in this “collage” approach in the boldly conceived librettos of Peter a different language.” Sellars for John Adams’s El Niño and The Gospel According to the Other Mary. A VERY HUMAN REQUIEM — “Of all the major composers in the history of music, Brahms was perhaps the only one to In his Requiem, Brahms shifts the focus away from pleading have distinguished himself as a choral conductor,” observes for the redemption of the deceased, away from dreading the musicologist/conductor Leon Botstein. Brahms’s choral “the undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn/No traveler conducting went hand-in-hand with his emerging reputation returns.” His music is geared instead toward consolation of as a composer. Few premieres in his career proved to be as the living. After all, young Brahms found himself in desperate significant as that of the Requiem. need of consolation when his beloved mentor and friend Robert Schumann, suffered his terrible demise while in an asylum and In fact, the world premiere is a somewhat complicated story. eventually died in 1856. An initial unveiling of the first three movements in Vienna in 1867 fared poorly, but the bulk of the work made a powerful The death of the composer’s mother in 1865 was another impetus. impression when Brahms conducted it at the Cathedral in In her memory, he wrote what became the fifth movement, which Bremen on Good Friday in 1868. (One movement was not heard contains some of the score’s most beautiful music and the line at that time: the fifth, featuring solo soprano. The complete, “I will comfort you as a mother would.” (Incidentally, the Brahms seven-movement Requiem premiered in February 1869 in authority Michael Musgrave thinks that the usual story — that Leipzig.) the composer wrote movement five as a kind of postscript, later interpolating it into the score — is inaccurate. Musgrave posits The unorthodox approach taken by Brahms confused even that Brahms withheld it from the Bremen premiere because he some of his fervent supporters. His avoidance of conventional needed to see the audience’s reaction before allowing such a references to Christianity troubled contemporaries like Karl private confession to become public.) Reinthaler, the Lutheran organist at Bremen Cathedral, who remarked: “For the Christian mind, however, there is lacking the What resulted is a uniquely personal choral work that, like the point on which everything turns, namely, the redeeming death traditional Requiem, addresses the ultimate questions. But it of Jesus.” does so without the established ideological framework of the latter. In a sense, the Brahms Requiem represents the ultimate Brahms’s title Ein deutsches Requiem (“A German Requiem”) “crossover” work of sacred to secular music. points to the original nature of the work in comparison with the longstanding tradition of musical settings of the Mass for the The listener is immediately drawn into this music by Brahms’s Dead. Even such freethinkers as Giuseppe Verdi contributed to masterful balance of lyricism and drama. His score provides the Latin Requiem tradition known from Roman Catholic liturgy. endlessly meaningful details on the moment-by-moment level, (Verdi’s came a little later, in 1874.) But Brahms, born into the while at the same time tracing a satisfyingly complete and Protestant tradition and given to an undogmatic humanism symmetrical large-scale design in the form of an arch. For in lieu of traditional faith, replaced this model with a new- instance, the simple, three-note motif heard when the chorus fangled design of his own. “German” in the title refers to the first enters (F-A-B-flat) serves as an organically unifying basic language of the texts Brahms culled for his libretto. Tellingly, he idea. The final movement is similarly slow and echoes the also declared that he may just as well call the work “A human beginning. The second and sixth movements provide dramatic Requiem.” highlights, the second resembling an apocalypse in slow motion and the sixth (with its addition of solo baritone) a fresco of Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible served as existential alarm. This is where Brahms comes closest to a Dies Brahms’s source, from which he wove an eclectic tapestry irae sensibility, though his approach is much more subjective using excerpts from the Psalms, Isaiah, the Book of Wisdom, than the horror film counterpart in conventional Requiems. Ecclesiasticus, and the New Testament. As a “Requiem,” Movements three and five both juxtapose the solo human Brahms clearly has in mind a connection to the ancient liturgical voice with the chorus, while the Psalm that is set in the fourth tradition of a Christian Mass in memory of a deceased person. movement takes its place as the serene center of the Requiem, At the same time, not a single movement of Ein deutsches around which everything revolves. Requiem corresponds exactly to the lineup we find in the Requiem settings by Mozart, Verdi, or Fauré, for example. Take The principle of a music of consolation returns in the final the Dies irae, with its theatrical depiction of Judgment Day moments. The miracle of musical time is such that Brahms has (constituting a massive portion of the Verdi Requiem): this is by this point firmly implanted a memory, so that its reprise is conspicuously absent from Brahms’s Requiem. laden with those associations. He uses this inherent musical power as a gesture akin to what the traditional Requiem is Not that Brahms’s strategy of his selecting his own texts was intended to do: to uplift those left to mourn with the promise entirely unprecedented. Handel’s Messiah is the best-known of eternal life. Brahms has left a musical imprint in our memory example of a similar method of piecing together various scriptural that he now recalls — the artist’s version of immortality. selections to trace the narrative of the nativity, passion, and resurrection of Jesus. Other composers of the Renaissance and Thomas May, program annotator for the Los Angeles Master Baroque — eras of intense interest to Brahms as a student of Chorale, writes about the arts and blogs at memeteria.com. music history — also anticipated this method of using selected texts to create a musical memorial. Famous examples included

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