Brahms’s A German Requiem – not a Requiem Mass at all – is a sequence of seven choral/orchestral movements, with baritone and soprano soloists, suffused with thoughts of peace and consolation. It’s quite hard to bring off with the necessary combination of firm confidence and soothing serenity, and the soloists have relatively little chance to affect the overall impression – that’s all down to the choir and orchestra. Anja Bihlmaier and the BBC Philharmonic hosted the Audi Jugendchorakademie for this performance in Manchester. They’re a youth choir, but not teenagers: young adults is the best description, and they number around 70 (founded and sponsored by the car maker Audi).
The Brahms was briefly (four minutes) preceded by Lili Boulanger’s setting of Psalm 24, a vivid score using the full resources of orchestra, choir and organ in imposing and arresting style, as well as in gentler moments. The organ, expertly played by Darius Battiwalla from its on-stage detached console (see picture), was heard to great effect, and the choir found it hard to equal the combined weight of it and the orchestra at the beginning and end of the piece – but what a warm-up! It’s the psalm that ends with the repeated call of “Lift up your heads, O ye gates …”, familiar to us from Handel’s Messiah, and Boulanger, no less than Handel, thought that should be a spine-tingling moment.
The quieter mid-section featured as tenor soloist the choir’s own Rodrigo Alegre, singing with some distinction from behind the orchestra in the choir circle, alongside his colleagues. (If you’re tempted to look at the BBC’s online programme notes for this concert, pay no attention to the suggestion that the soloist was the baritone featured later in the Brahms: it wasn’t).
In the German Requiem the scoring is opulent, particularly in the later sections, and there was a tendency to overdo orchestral things occasionally, but balance in the hall acoustic was usually well achieved and the choir saved much of their best effort for the big fugal moments.
The softly articulated opening from the choir (“Selig sind, die da Leid tragen”) was beautiful and tellingly expressive, and it became clear as the work proceeded that the soprano singers were capable of a powerful top line. As they sang, under Anja Bihlmaier's direction (see picture below), of pastoral perseverance in the middle part of “Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras”, a quality of innocence and peace emerged, and the full contingent responded to the positivity of Isaiah’s “The redeemed of the Lord shall return” with attack and energy.
Baritone soloist Joshua Hopkins was eloquent in his first contribution – a prayer drawn from Psalm 39, somewhat more fatalistic in the German Bible than in Coverdale’s English – but the choral fugue that followed was solid, incisive and had an exciting crescendo in its finish. It’s followed by the much-excerpted central part of the work, “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen” (“How lovely are thy dwellings fair”, as often heard), in which the sopranos shone like good deeds in a naughty world, and the orchestral strings throbbed encouragingly.
Spare a thought for the soprano soloist in any German Requiem: one big moment and it’s all over. Julia Grüter’s voice was strong, accurate and dominant in “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit”, certainly an angel of strong consolation, and the choir sang delicately in the background. Joshua Hopkins joined the choral-and-solo “Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt”, which includes the words of St Paul (also familiar from Messiah) about the last trumpet… except that in the German Bible it’s the last trombone… and put a sense of thrill into it. It’s Brahms’s nearest thing to a Dies Irae, and finished in a powerful choral climax before a fugue in which the choir’s sound was finally unabashed and triumphant. The last section, returning to thoughts of blessed rest, showed their endearing purity, blend and warmth.
- To be broadcast on Radio 3 on 29 September (and on BBC Sounds)
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