Brahms gave a very special Requiem to the music world: “A German Requiem”. On August 24, the soprano Sophie Wagner, the bass baritone Matthias Winckhler supported by the Bach Choir Mainz and accompanied by the Deutsche Radio Philharomie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern performed as part of the Rheingau Music Festival in the basilica of Eberbach Monastery with overwhelming intimacy and impressive intensity.
When Brahms presented his work to the public on Good Friday 1868, even feared critics were impressed: Eduard Hanslick had written: “Since Bach’s Mass in B minor and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, nothing has been written in this field that can stand alongside Brahms’s German Requiem! There is nothing to be added to this, even today!
At the beginning of his “German Requiem” Johannes Brahms makes clear what it is all about: “Blessed are those who suffer there, for they are to be comforted”. The person who is to mourn and experience consolation is at the centre. It doesn’t come with a great roar of sound, but with overwhelming intimacy.
“Why”? the choir hurls accusingly towards the audience, followed by a pause – as if it should be clearly underlined once more. “Why is there suffering on earth? How can a God allow that? These central questions obviously also drove Brahms around. “Why is the light given to the troubled and the life to the grieved hearts waiting for death” Brahms has taken over from the lamentations of Hiob. But he has no answer until the end of the four-part motet.
The focus is on earthly existence, man and the human community. For Brahms it becomes the actual spiritual power.
The Romanesque basilica of the Eberbach monastery from the 12th century, with its smooth and unadorned walls, but very unusual acoustic, gave this choral work and theme by Johannes Brahms a very special framework. jwm