Luogo e data di registrazione		Rudolfinum, Praga (Cecoslovacchia): - 25/27 marzo 1982 (Opp. 53, 82, 54 & 89) - 25 agosto / 3 settembre 1982 (Opp. 45, 55 & 50
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Production		Dr. Hans Hirsch
	Recording Supervision		Wolfgang Stengel
	Balance Engineer		Karl-August Naegler
	Prima Edizione LP		Deutsche Grammophon | 2741 019 | LC 0173 | 4 LPs - 52' 25", 47' 12", 38' 50" & 53' 51" | (p) 1983 | Digital Pubblicazioni separate: - Deutsche Grammophon | 410 697-1 | LC 0173 | 2 LPs - 52' 42 & 48' 42" | (p) 1983 | Digital | Opp. 45, 54 & 89 - Deutsche Grammophon | 410 864-1 | LC 0173 | 1 LP - 51' 46" | (p) 1983 | Digital | Opp. 53, 82, 55 - Deutsche Grammophon | 410 865-1 | LC 0173 | 1 LP - 38' 50" | (p) 1983 | Digital | Op. 50
	Prima Edizione CD		Deutsche Grammophon | 419 737-2 | LC 0173 | 3 CDs - 63' 43", 67' 06" & 62' 50" | (p) 1983 | DDD
	Note		Co-production with Supraphon, Praha

EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM (A GERMAN REQUIEM) In 1853, the year in which Johannes Brahms, at the age of twenty, experienced a decisive turning-point in his life, Robert Schumann wrote the following prophetic words about him: “When he shall lower his magic wand in the place where the powers massed in the chorus and orchestra lend him their strength there shall be vouchsafed us yet more wondrous prospects into the secrets of the spirit world.” Fifteen years later, when Brahms’s German Requiem was given its first performance on Good Friday, 10 April 1868, in Bremen Cathedral, Schumann’s ‘prophecy’ was fulfilled. This was the first work in which Brahms ventured into the field of music for large, mixed vocal and orchestral forces, and at the very first attempt he provided proof of his mastery in handling “the powers massed in the chorus and orchestra”. In that essay of 1853, “New Paths”, Schumann had also indirectly referred to Brahms as the heir of Beethoven (and elsewhere he was explicit in doing so). However, in the particular area of religious music, at least, Beethoven stayed with the traditional liturgical text of the Mass, whereas Brahms made a complete break with liturgical tradition in both the content and the form of his German Requiem. A consistent ‘tone’ prevails in all seven movements of the Requiem, which provides a firm basis for the unity of the cycle. Attempts to demonstrate that symmetry is the predominant formal conception - with the fourth movement a central pivot - do not meet the measure of the work. A description of the creative process that Brahms pursued in this great oratorio-like work could almost begin with the statement “in the beginning was the Word”. The consistency of mood of the biblical texts that Brahms selected and placed in his own chosen order is the first factor contributing to the impression of perfect formal integrity. The different emphases and nuances of the subjects that come to the fore in the individual movements - consolation, patience, hope, joy, grief, trust, redemption - provide the opportunity for the music to create variation but there is nevertheless a sense of one underlying emotion common to them all, which, as Siegfried Kross has aptly commented, gives the work an unwritten dedication: “To them that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” The biblical text does more than ensure the inner cohesion of the cycle in respect of its subject matter; in combination with techniques from the traditions of Protestant choral music it leads to the creation of musical formulae which are determined by the nature of the words. The various ideas and images of the text are extracted from the whole for the purposes of their musical setting: single lines or groups of lines are repeated over and over again, imbuing the biblical text so to speak with an inner motion, in forms of imitation and fugue, exchanged antiphonally between the different sections of the choir or sung as stanzas; like an object of great value the lines are turned about to be viewed from every side, moulded in new musical shapes, plumbed for every atom of meaning. Then the following line of the text is introduced into the texture in the manner of a motet, to undergo similar treatment. In View of the primacy of the words, it is no wonder that Brahms took great pains to make them audible. A German Requiem is one of those rare choral works whose texts can be understood even at the first hearing. The fifth movement (which Brahms did not write until after the premiere in Bremen) is exceptional in that two different lines of the text are sung simultaneously: while the soprano soloist is still singing the final words of the opening excerpt, “Und eure Freude soll niemand von euch nehmen”, the chorus starts to sing a line reserved for it alone, “Ich will euch trösten, wie einen seine Mutter tröstet”. However, both these lines are also delivered elsewhere on their own, so the principle of audibility is upheld. At the end of this movement Brahms has brought the vocal lines of the soprano soloist and the chorus so close together, above all in respect of rhythm, as to make the words “wiedersehen” (“see [you] again”) and “trösten” (“comfort”) almost identical in sound: a subtle means of conveying to the listener the meaning of these central tenets of Christian faith. RINALDO In Rinaldo Brahms came closer than in any other work to writing an opera, In this cantata, the composer, who spent many years looking for a libretto that would suit him as the basis for an opera, created a piece that requires listeners to imagine a scene and to perceive interior and exterior actions experienced by characters who are presented through the medium of sung dialogue. In fact, the ‘action’ ‘takes place’ in two different scenes, both of them thoroughly typical of the Romantic theatre: the distant island where Armida casts her spells of love, and theship at sea which carries the hero, released from the enchantment, back to a life of action. The subject of Rinaldo comes from Torquato Tasso’s great epic poem, published in 1581, “La Gierusalemme liberata, overo il Goffredo”. Rinaldo is a knight who takes part in the crusade in which, under the leadership of Godfrey of Bouillon (Tasso’s Goffredo), Christians liberated Jerusalem from pagan (Islamic) rule. As the Christians are encamped outside Jerusalem, the seductive enchantress Armida appears in their midst, sent by the Prince of Darkness to bewitch the knights. At the sight of Rinaldo, the most heroic and noble of the Christians, Armida is herself overcome with passionate longing; she transports him and herself to an island in the remotest part of the ocean. Godfrey dispatches other knights to free Rinaldo and bring him back. Armida is unable to keep him at her side; she destroys the enchanted island and swears revenge. She fights in battle on the side of the pagans against the Christians, and is wounded by Rinaldo. Instead of killing her, Rinaldo converts her to Christianity and eventually takes her back to Rome as his Wife. The story provided a subject for many operas, such as Lully’s “tragédie lyrique” Armida et Renaud (1686), Hande1’s opera Rinaldo (1711) and Gluck’s “drame héroïque”Armide (1777). In 1863 Brahms came across Goethe’s Cantate Rinaldo, written in 1811 for Prince Friedrich of Gotha, who possessed a pleasant tenor voice. The text concerns only a tiny segment of the story of Rinaldo and Armida, and concentrates on a single aspect of it. It begins at a point when Armida’s enchantment has already been broken, and she is present only in the memory of Rinaldo, while his fellow knights urge him to return with them. It ends as their ship approaches the shores of the Holy Land and the cry is raised: “Godofred und Solyma°” (“Godfrey and ]erusalem!”) The particular idea that interested Goethe was the mystery of transformation. It was only when he was enchanted that Rinaldo believed he was alive. His awakening by the knights signifies death to him: “Im Tiefsten zerstöret, / Ich hab’ Euch vernommen; / Ihr drängt mich zu kommen. / Unglückliche Reise! / Unseliger Wind!” Brahms set Goethe’s text without alterations. He gave the title “On the high seas” to the second scene, but even that is implicit in the text. True to the spirit of the dramatic poem, the music presents above all the inner action, depicting its development in a series of expansive episodes. Thus Rinaldo’s recent loss of his own identity in Armida’s enchanted world is presented in the form of an ecstatic recollection of the beautiful and beloved woman; three lines particularly apt to a climax (“Sobald sie erscheinet / In lieblicher Jugend, / In glänzender Pracht”) are repeated by Brahms and placed so that they form the conclusion of Rinaldo’s great aria, where the powerful entry of the chorus of knights with “Nein! nicht länger ist zu säumen!” immediately afterwards adds to the dramatic impact. The two turning points of the drama provided by the text - the sight of the reflection in the “diamond shield” and the vision of the “she-demon” Armida - are rendered musically with fascinating rightness. A subito pianissimo together with the bleak sound of the strings playing a single note over four bare octaves, with a very soft interpolation on two trumpets, gives the moment of looking in the mirror an expression of suppressed terror. The second turning point leads from a pianissimo to a fortissimo, but the role that effect plays in depicting the horrifying vision that comes to Rinaldo after his cruel awakening is overshadowed by the harmonic effect of resolving a plain chord of A minor onto the augmented triad A flat-C-E. This mysterious-sounding triad, played piano, perhaps represents the injury done to the image preserved in Rinaldo’s memory. Immediately thereafter the music ‘explodes’ in an Allegro con fuoco, which depicts the different image of Armida as she was last seen, dealing destruction all about her. The work closes with a chorus in the heroic key of E flat major. Rinaldo joins in, no longer at odds with his fellow knights, but singing in unison with the chorus tenors - a simple metaphor for his return to their number. ALT-RHAPSODIE (ALTO RHAPSODY) Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody is one of those works inspired by a specific personal experience, which can only be properly appreciated if the experience in question is known. In the summer of 1869 Brahms fell in love with Clara Schumann’s twenty-four-year-old daughter Julie, but he kept his feelings so perfectly concealed that the Schumann household was able to proceed with the preliminaries of Julie’s engagement to Count Marmorito, without anyone suspecting that, or how, it might affect Brahms. He learned of the engagement in September, and the news struck him a deep blow. Shortly afterwards he called on Clara to give her the Alto Rhapsody. “He called it his wedding song”, she wrote in her diary. The “profound pain in the text and the music” moved her more than any work he had written for a very long time. Beginning with a diminished second-inversion chord, the piece reflects in its extreme harmonic tensions the emotional anguish and psychological torments of a poem of the Sturm und Drang. The poem “Harzreise im Winter” dates from 1777; in 1820 Goethe provided an explanatory comment, according to which the three stanzas set by Brahms refer to one of the many young men who had succumbed in the 1770s to “the sickness of sensibility prevalent at that time” and bared their souls to the author of Werther in “repeated and importunate outpourings”. Brahms was probably not acquainted with the poet’s later, cooler view of the poem. To him the verses were the vehicle he needed for the expression of his state of mind. He immersed himself in their sombre images and produced a tone poem that in its content and its form is a worthy counterpart to the original poem. The three stanzas divide the music into three sections, which subtly differ from each other in time (4/4 - 6/4 - 4/4), key (C minor - C minor - C major) and tempo (Adagio - Poco Andante - Adagio). The first two stanzas are sung by a contralto soloist accompanied by the orchestra, and a four-part male-voice chorus is added in the third. If the move from the minor to the brighter major mode creates a sense of a partial relaxation in the predominantly tense mood of the work, the effect is enhanced by the hymnlike character of the closing section. Goethe’s comment on this stanza, referring to the poet in whom the sight of the barren winter landscape has brought to mind “the image of the lonely youth, hostile to man and to life”, was: “His heartfelt sympathy is poured out in prayer.” Brahms, by introducing the chorus, elevates the prayer of the individual to a hymn of human fellowship. In the repetition of part of the last stanza the stark biblical image of “dem Durstenden in der Wüste” is replaced by the human consolation of “So erquicke sein Herz!” and so the emphasis on release and reconciliation is maintained to the last note. SCHICKSALSLIED (SONG OF DESTINY) Brahms’s setting of Hölderlin’s poem is a rare instance of a composer not merely placing an arbitrary interpretation on words but explicitly contradicting a poet’s statement. What appears at a first glance to be a matter of formal completion - the reprise of the orchestral introduction at the end of the work - turns out to be the composer’s protest against the content of the poem. In a letter to Karl Reinthaler, who had conducted the second performance of the Requiem in Bremen, Brahms wrote in October 1871: “As we’ve alreadz discussed enough: I am saying something that the poet does not say, and it would certainly be better if what is missing had been the most important thing for him.” And a short time later: “And even if it is perhaps possible to argue that the poet doesn’t say the most important thing, I still don’t know if it can be understood as things are.” It is not difficult to see what Brahms regarded as the “most important thing” which was missing in the poem. Hölderlin’s “Schicksalslied” expresses the contrast between human existence, with its unending pain and continual uncertainty, and that of “celestial beings”, who dwell above the clouds in blessed peace and eternal clarity, without offering any prospect of release for humanity. Hölderlin’s poem ends with the last line of the ‘human’ stanza, “Jahrlang ins Ungewisse hinab”, but Brahms follows this with a return of the orchestral prelude that introduced the ‘celestial’ stanzas, and thus appends to fatalistic portrayal of human existence a declaration of faith that some part of the peace of God will fall to men. He spent some time in the search for the right ending for the work. When the score was already written out in full, he suddenly flirted with the idea of returning to his earlier version, in which individual words and lines were repeated by the chorus, but Hermann Levi’s objections were so emphatic that he decided to abide by the purely instrumental close. Some doubts remained: “It’s - a silly idea... It’s perhaps a failed experiment”, and “The musician would do better to beware of his own thoughts”; but the idea of confronting a pre-Christian view of fate from the perspective of the Sermon on the Mount was so important to him that he decided to make no further changes. TRIUMPHLIED (SONG OF TRIUMPH) France declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. It was only a matter of weeks before German victory was assured. Napoleon III was taken prisoner in September, whereupon a republic was immediately proclaimed in Paris. The siege of Paris began. Bismarck exploited the victorious campaign to persuade the princes of southern Germany to acknowledge the King of Prussia as German Emperor. The proclamation of German unity under Emperor Wilhelm I was made in the palace of Versailles on 18 January 1871. Shortly afterwards Paris fell. The formal declaration of peace was signed in Frankfurt am Main on 10 May 1871. These bare dates and facts about the Franco-Prussian War have been given to demonstrate just how closely the composition of Triumphlied was connected with the course of political events. Brahms was caught up by the huge swell of patriotism. He began work on his “Song of Triumph” in October 1870 and when, early in 1871, Wilhelm I had been crowned Emperor, Bismarck appointed Imperial Chancellor and the German Empire not only unified but also slightly enlarged, Brahms dedicated the work, on completion, to Emperor Wilhelm, signing the letter in which he sought permission to make the dedication “Your Imperial and Royal Majesty’s most humble subject, Johannes Brahms”. Brahms knew his Bible and had no difficulty in finding the text appropriate to the occasion: passages from Revelation which were general enough in their wording to be taken out of context, while encouraging anyone who felt so inclined to relate them - in a broad sense - to recent events. A line like “hat das Reich eingenommen” could be, and was intended to be, associated with the establishment of the new empire, and if the line “Ein König aller Könige, und ein Herr aller Herren” was applied to Emperor Wilhelm, no one protested. Patriotism commonly has a reverse face as well: Brahms was also giving voice - covertly - to his dislike of the French and of ‘sinful’ Paris. Revelation 19: 2 runs: “For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornications, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.” In the opening movement of Triumphlied the chorus sings the phrase “For true and righteous are his judgments” and then falls silent for four bars, leaving to the orchestra the phrase that follows in the Bible, the unpronounceable - but fully understood - text “for he hath judged the great whore”. In Brahms’s own manuscript copy of the full score these words are actually written in, in his own hand, underneath the orchestral part. Though the circumstances that gave rise to Triumphlied cannot be reconstructed in the consciousness of modern audiences, it is still possible to assess and admire this monumental work, written in a resplendent D major, as an imposing document of a historical phenomenon. NÄNIE “Naenia” was the ritual funeral song of ancient Rome. Schiller gave his “Nänie” the form of an elegy in distichs made up of regularly alternating hexameters and pentameters, but the content has more the nature of a hymn than an elegy, and the poem ends with the expression of homage to art, whose role it is not only to console the bereaved but also to ensure life beyond death. The transience of beauty and perfection is illustrated by the stories of three great mortals, Euridice, Adonis and Achilles; the latter was, however, glorified by the song raised in mourning for him (“Aber die Klage hebt an um den verherrlichten Sohn” is the poem’s turning point). Death is irreversible, but to become a song of mourning in the mouth of those one has loved (“ein Klaglied zu sein im Mund der Geliebten”) means a subsuming of death in the ideal existence of art. The structure of Brahms’s setting is governed by the inner articulation of the poem. While the first four distichs are uniform in tempo (Andante), time signature (6/4) and key (D major), with the fifth these parameters change to Più sostenuto - 4/4 - F sharp major. The last distich introduces a reprise, which appears at first to underline a correspondence-by-antithesis between the first and last distichs; but then the last hexameter “Auch ein Klaglied zu sein im Mund der Geliebten, ist herrlich” brings a fitting conclusion to the subject and the tone of Nänie. Brahms wrote the work in 1880-81 in memory of the artist Anselm Feuerbach, and dedicated it to his mother Henriette Feuerbach; he could have sung no more beautiful or sublime song for his friend. GESANG DER PARZEN (SONG or THE FATES) Brahms’s last major choral work presents a number of riddles and problems of interpretation, arising from the contradictions in the relationship of the text and the music. In this respect Gesang der Parzen makes a pair with Schickesalslied. In the case of the Hölderlin setting it is possible to show that Brahms deliberately used the medium of the music to extend the poem’s content, and even to divert it in a direction quite different from that intended by the poet. There is a strong case for arguing that the composer felt a similar lack of sympathy with the content of Gesang der Parzerz. The song of the Parcae, the Greek Fates, comes from Goethe’s play Iphigenie auf Tauris and concerns the omnipotence of the gods who can raise and cast down human beings at will - "wie’s ihnen gefällt". Fear and impotence are the human lot; children and childrenßs children are condemned along with their fathers. After the five stanzas of the actual song of the Fates Goethe adds a kind of epilogue in the same metre: “So sangen die Parzen; / Es horcht der Verbannte / In nächtlichen Höhlen, / Der Alte, die Lieder, / Denkt Kinder und Enkel / Und schüttelt das Haupt.” This enigmatic “epilogue” may have seemed to Brahms like a hint from the poet to look for some foothold beyond the dismal message of the Fates; he probably identified himself with the figure of the old man shaking his head over a world where the gods condemn “children and grandchildren”. This provides us with a clue to the interpretation of the puzzling way in which Brahms sets the fifth stanza, the last of the actual song of the Fates, in D major, 3/4, marked “sehr 'weich und gebunden” (“gentle and legato”) and “dolcissimo”. There is no metrical or other structural difference in the poem to correspond to the musical isolation of this stanza from the others. The distinction is underlined by the way Brahms takes it upon himself to repeat the first stanza before the introduction of the D major music: by this means he draws a line, so to speak, beneath the detailed account of the terrors pronounced by the Fates on the one hand, but on the other hand, by reiteration, he emphasizes the omnipotence of the gods. From this point onwards the composer’s interpretation diverges from the substance of his text. The setting of the first four stanzas was very straightforward, but now the music is made the means of registering dissent. The discrepancy between the lhounding of whole generations described in the text and the lovely, lulling character of the music is so obvious that the purpose of the setting must be to express rejection of the idea contained in the words. We might speak of a contrast in simultaneity, borne upon two differing ideas and conceptions which are communicated by language on the one hand and by music on the other: and those contrasting ideas are the ancient world’s concept of fate and the Christian concept of redemption. In 1896 Brahms had this to say about his setting of the fifth stanza to Gustav Ophüls, who published a collection of the texts of his songs: “I often hear people waxing philosophical about the fifth verse of the ‘Parzenlied’ [“Es wenden die Herrscher”]. In my opinion, the mere onset of the major mode will melt the heart and bring a tear to the eye of the unsuspecting listener; only at that point will he be seized by a sense of all the misery of mankind.” From this we can deduce that Brahms used the major mode for a quasi-cathartic purpose, so that simultaneously with despair, Christian faith in the redemption of mankind finds expression in an almost imperceptible manner. The composer of A German Requiem and Four Serious Songs was able to tackle ontological subjects such as that of Gesang der Parzen from the standpoint of a totally undogmatic but nonetheless Christian faith. The music was carefully composed to create the discrepancy between it and the text - a discrepancy which is the true motive for the composiuoni. Peter Petersen (Translation: Marz Whittall)