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Brahms | Ein Deutsches Requiem
Johannes Brahms

Hervé Niquet / Flemish Radio Choir

Brahms | Ein Deutsches Requiem

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Evil Penguin
UPC: 0608917720525
Catnr: EPRC 0019
Release date: 25 September 2015
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Label
Evil Penguin
UPC
0608917720525
Catalogue number
EPRC 0019
Release date
25 September 2015

"''I don't agree with every conclusion he heas reached but i respect his approach to the work and he's certainly made me think afresh about Brahms's great masterpiece. I thought i knew it very well but it's good to have one's ideas challenged.''"

Musicweb International, 20-11-2015
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Artist(s)
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About the album

Lore Binon, soprano
Tassis Christoyannis, baritone
With his German Requiem, Johannes Brahms rose up to the challenge Robert Schumann had set his young protégé “to direct his magic wand where the massed forces of chorus and orchestra would lend him their power”. The result was a masterpiece which deviates from traditional Requiem horrors to address all mankind with a message of hope and comfort. On this recording, acclaimed conductor Hervé Niquet fuses his Flemish Radio Choir and Brussels Philharmonic in a concentrated and intense performance, which brings out the expressive and rhetorical essence of music which is at once grand and intimate.
________________________
Hervé Niquet:
I have some scruples in writing the following lines on Brahms and his Requiem, for the literature on these topics is so unbelievably rich. All musicologists, musicians, writers, and critics seem to have praised, admired, analysed, dissected, considered, conceptualised, figured out, and reinvented this work…
And yet, the cross-fertilization of my familiarity with these over-conducted lines, and my passion for rhetoric and symbolism, has urged me to start from afresh, and revisit this music through the accumulated experience with composers from bygone ages, in which rhetoric and symbolism represented the responses to questions which often were too complex or intellectual. My God, it was so simple, so inspiring, and so fertile to explain to the musicians the meaning of each motive, the function and place of each stone in the edifice, without letting ourselves be overwhelmed by a museum-prone approbation which would have moved us to speak sadly and to slow down the train…
Respect for the elementary sense of the text and the vocalism of each phrase have guided us to a simplicity far removed from the patina, which often conceals this Requiem. Once this simple humility is acknowledged, a gentleness suddenly invades each phrase. And then it is pivotal to recognize that there is no sadness on these pages, but an unspeakable kindness immersed in tender melancholy. No sentimentality whatsoever, but a mild enrapture upon happening on each memory Brahms believed to be buried. And please no decorum: this is a concert piece foreign to all incense and mausoleum.
Brahms relies on his musicians not to engage in any liturgical service, but to play a mordant narrative instead. As in the opera, or at a lied recital with an orchestra – light and etheric – or a flesh-and-blood choir terracing the auditorium, unsure whether it should cry or rejoice. Under his giant white beard, Brahms is a man of the theatre. “Requiem” is his best opera!
Auf dieser Aufnahme gelingt es dem beachteten Dirigenten Hervé Niquet eine Fusion zwischen dem Flemish Radio Choir und den Brussels Philharmonic herzustellen, die in einer hochkonzentrierten und intensiven Aufführung von Brahms Meisterwerk mündet, die das expressive und rhetorische Moment dieses einzigartigen Werkes anmutig und intim interpretiert.

Nach Faurés Requiem, nun die Fortsetzung von Hervé Niquets Reihe auf EPR Classics.
Poche persone possono mantenere più elevate aspettative, ma quando completò il suo Requiem tedesco nel 1868, Johannes Brahms sapeva di essersi dimostrato all’altezza della sfida che il suo padre musicale Robert Schumann aveva lanciato, quando aveva salutato Brahms allora ventenne come un compositore «destinato a rappresentare idealmente il nostro tempo», e lo aveva spronato «ad indirizzare la sua bacchetta magica su quella musica in cui le grandi forze del coro e dell’orchestra gli presterebbero il loro potere». L’esito di questo invito fu un capolavoro che si discosta dai tradizionali orrori del Giudizio e dell’Inferno per indirizzarsi all’intera umanità con un messaggio di speranza e di conforto. In linea con questo messaggio, il celebre direttore Hervé Niquet scava sotto la patina accumulata di pesantezza e di sventura, per esaltare l’inesprimibile gentilezza del Requiem. Niquet fonde le sue forze in un’esecuzione rigenerante ma intensa, che fa emergere l’essenza retorica ed espressiva di una musica che è grandiosa e intima al tempo stesso. Il Requiem tedesco è il secondo volume di una collana di cinque CD dedicata ai Requiem più emblematici (Brahms, Mozart) ma anche ingiustamente dimenticati (come quello di Maurice Duruflé).

Artist(s)

Brussels Philharmonic

“The world needs symphonic music.  And symphonic music needs the world.” That is the firm belief of the Brussels Philharmonic. As a symphony orchestra founded in 1935 under the auspices of the Belgian public broadcaster, unveiling the symphonic world as best we can is deep in our DNA. By innovating while maintaining full respect for the value of the past, we keep the symphonic music of the past, present and future relevant and inspiring – for ourselves and all of society. We do this from the historic Studio 4 at Flagey in Brussels, together with our music director Kazushi Ono: he shares our open and adventurous spirit and our rock-solid belief in the need for cross-fertilization between art, life and society.
more
“The world needs symphonic music. And symphonic music needs the world.” That is the firm belief of the Brussels Philharmonic. As a symphony orchestra founded in 1935 under the auspices of the Belgian public broadcaster, unveiling the symphonic world as best we can is deep in our DNA. By innovating while maintaining full respect for the value of the past, we keep the symphonic music of the past, present and future relevant and inspiring – for ourselves and all of society. We do this from the historic Studio 4 at Flagey in Brussels, together with our music director Kazushi Ono: he shares our open and adventurous spirit and our rock-solid belief in the need for cross-fertilization between art, life and society.

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Flemish Radio Choir

The Vlaams Radio Koor (Flemish Radio Choir) was founded in 1937 by the Belgian public broadcaster of the day. Today it has become a choir of exceptionally high quality that counts both domestically and internationally among the top ensembles. The 24 professional singers rehearse under the baton of chief conductor Hervé Niquet in Studio 1 of the well-known Flagey building in Brussels, and perform throughout Flanders and Europe.
more
The Vlaams Radio Koor (Flemish Radio Choir) was founded in 1937 by the Belgian public broadcaster of the day. Today it has become a choir of exceptionally high quality that counts both domestically and internationally among the top ensembles. The 24 professional singers rehearse under the baton of chief conductor Hervé Niquet in Studio 1 of the well-known Flagey building in Brussels, and perform throughout Flanders and Europe.

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Hervé Niquet (conductor)

Hervé Niquet, chief conductor of the Flemish Radio Choir as of 2011, is a passionate musician like most of the composers of Baroque music whose works he enjoys. He studied not only harpsichord, piano and organ, but also the lyric arts and conducting. He considers the musical profession from a researcher’s perspective, and thus gives priority to primary sources in order to move beyond established conventions and customs. The experience he garnered from working with several major Baroque ensembles laid the basis for his special connection with the French ‘Grand Motet’ of the 17th and 18th centuries. His great desire to bring new life to this unknown repertoire resulted in 1987 in the establishment of Le Concert Spirituel. Over twenty years,...
more

Hervé Niquet, chief conductor of the Flemish Radio Choir as of 2011, is a passionate musician like most of the composers of Baroque music whose works he enjoys. He studied not only harpsichord, piano and organ, but also the lyric arts and conducting. He considers the musical profession from a researcher’s perspective, and thus gives priority to primary sources in order to move beyond established conventions and customs. The experience he garnered from working with several major Baroque ensembles laid the basis for his special connection with the French ‘Grand Motet’ of the 17th and 18th centuries.
His great desire to bring new life to this unknown repertoire resulted in 1987 in the establishment of Le Concert Spirituel. Over twenty years, this ensemble has become the reference point for Baroque music.
In the same spirit, and starting from the principle that over the centuries there has been only one ‘French music’, Hervé Niquet conducts various eminent orchestras, including the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Sinfonia Varsovia, l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Rias Kammerchor, the Kammerorchester Basel, and Brussels Philharmonic.
In 2009, he participated in the foundation of the Centre de musique romantique française, also known as Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice. This led, among other things, to a prestigious project in collaboration with the Brussels Philharmonic and with the Flemish Radio Choir: a CD collection with music from the Prix de Rome and rarely performed works from the French Romantic repertoire. The first CD of the series is devoted to Debussy (2009), the second volume consists of neglected works by Saint-Saëns (2010), the third disc features the work of Charpentier (2011) and the fourth volume (2012) is dedicated to d’Ollone. In the meantime, new series have been launched featuring portraits of composers and French opera (Joncières’ Dmitri and David’s Herculanum).
Hervé Niquet has been made Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite and an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.


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Composer(s)

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer is such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the 'Three Bs' of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.   Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become...
more
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer is such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.
Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished.
Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Within his meticulous structures is embedded, however, a highly romantic nature.

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Press

''I don't agree with every conclusion he heas reached but i respect his approach to the work and he's certainly made me think afresh about Brahms's great masterpiece. I thought i knew it very well but it's good to have one's ideas challenged.''
Musicweb International, 20-11-2015

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Often bought together with..

Gabriel Fauré
Fauré Requiem
Hervé Niquet / Flemish Radio Choir

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