Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem / Marin Alsop

From its disappointing initial reception, misunderstood and under-rehearsed in Vienna in 1867, Brahms’s A German Requiem (the composer, in a letter, once substituted ‘human’ for ‘German’) has since become known as one of the most powerfully charged such works in the canon. It was almost certainly the death of Brahms’s mother in 1865 that triggered his desire to write such a work. But it avoids overt Christian references, thus differing profoundly from conventional liturgical Latin Requiems, and remains deeply rooted in the tradition of Bach and Schütz. This disc is released to coincide with Marin Alsop’s concert, with the same work, at London’s BBC Proms on 17 August 2013.