By alangirvan
25-Apr-2012

Refreshing Brahms Requiem  

Even if you already have many other copies of the Brahms German Requiem, this is a new refreshing version which you would want to hear. Nice choice of tempi, good soloists and good work from the choir and soloists.

The bonus is the choice of two Schutz works - one of Brahms' favorite composers - showing the influences on the Requiem.

Of course the earlier recordings of the Brahms symphonies in the same series also include fine performances of the shorter choral works by Brahms.

These are fine performances that make you listen again to familiar music.
more....

By JD88992
30-Apr-2012

Requiem revisited  

It's hard to believe that Gardiner's previous recording of this work was released twenty years ago! This new version caps a concert cycle that has already given us all the symphonies (though Brahms actually wrote those afterwards). Gardiner's top-notch chorus is responsive to every variation in dynamics and tempo, which can change from bar to bar in this highly romantic performance.

The music never just sits around being pretty, although it certainly is; it is always going somewhere--perhaps most strikingly (and perhaps a shade too fast) in the opening pages of the last movement, often an anticlimax after the exuberant fugue that precedes it.

Preceding the main work on the disc are two motets by Heinrich Schutz, whose counterpoint influenced Brahms, and who set some of the same texts used in the Requiem. The live recording is very clear (if a tad close), the audience is remarkably quiet, and the young-sounding soloists handle their assignments well.
more....

By David Threasher
Gramophone
01-May-2012