The Berlin Radio Choir sings major choral works by Johannes Brahms There was no point in his life when Johannes Brahms did not take an...

The Berlin Radio Choir sings major choral works by Johannes Brahms

There was no point in his life when Johannes Brahms did not take an active interest in choral music. It was an interest that he evinced not only as a choral conductor in Detmold, Hamburg and Vienna but also as a composer who bequeathed to posterity a vast number of secular and sacred choral works. Among his principal compositions for chorus and orchestra were not only his German Requiem but also his Song of Destiny op. 54 (1871) for mixed chorus and orchestra. This was arguably the most significant of all Romantic settings of a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin and has now been selected by the Berlin Radio Choir for a CD that explores the whole vast range of Brahms’s choral writing. Under the direction of Gijs Leenaars, the Choir – heard here in various formations – is joined in some of these works by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester of Berlin. The Drei Gesänge op. 42, for example, are scored for mixed unaccompanied chorus, while Nänie op. 82 was written for chorus and orchestra. “All of the pieces that are featured on this CD show how well Brahms was able to write for the human voice,” says Gijs Leenaars, “and this is true of both their compositional textures and the impact of the sonorities that he uses.” At the same time Leenaars notes that the present programme is an ideal showcase for the Choir’s versatility. The Choir, he goes on, is a “great vehicle for choral works with orchestra, in which the right balance between orchestra and voices is a challenge”, while in the a cappella repertory the singers impress with the delicate textures of their voices.

The texts that Brahms has set in this selection of pieces all raise existential questions about our lives as human beings. The Song of Destiny is taken from Hölderlin’s epistolary novel Hyperion and draws on the world of classical mythology, contrasting the carefree lives of the gods on Mount Olympus with the toilsome existence of mortals on earth. Nänie for chorus and orchestra was written in 1881 in memory of the painter Anselm Feuerbach, who had died the previous year. The motet “Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen?” (Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery?) op. 74 no. 1 revolves around the question of why an almighty God allows to us suffer. “Es tönt ein voller Harfenklang” (The sounds of a full-toned harp ring forth) comes from the Vier Gesänge op. 17, which Brahms wrote in 1860 for the women’s choir that he had founded in Hamburg the previous year. And the Geistliches Lied (Sacred Song) op. 30 for four-part mixed chorus and strings invites its listeners to be steadfast and take comfort in their faith in the face of suffering and death.