In 2017, Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir was granted permission by Rundfunkchor Berlin to use their new arrangement, written for choir and two performers on one piano. It has also previously been performed in this set-up – including by Brahms himself – but, especially in recent years, there has been a growing interest in exploring the requiem in a sleek, chamber music version where Brahms’ fantastic work with the voices of the choir is given its proper place of prominence.

Ein Deutsches Requiem consists of seven movements, all of which revolve around conveying a comfort to the survivors. Perhaps Brahms composed the work as a way of coping with the grief associated with the deaths of people close to him: His mother died in 1865, when he began the work, and his friend, Robert Schumann, had died a few years before that.

By the same token, Schumann had planned exactly what Brahms now undertook, namely a requiem in the German language. ‘German’ in the title of the work in fact refers to the language and not the German people. Brahms himself has said that he would gladly have called his requiem for ‘Ein menschliches Requiem’ if this had made his intention any clearer.

Contributors:
Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir
Maria Demérus, soprano
David Wijkman, barytone
Rikke Sandberg, pianist
Tanja Zapolski, pianist
Mogens Dahl, conductor