Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Brahms
Bernard Holland wrote in the New York Times: "Brahms's 'German Requiem' could just as well have added the words 'North' or 'Protestant' to its title. Roman Catholic ritual is abandoned, as are Latin texts; indeed, Brahms chose the German words from the Bible himself. The King's College recording is from EMI, conducted by Stephen Cleobury, and please, no orchestra; we'll use duo-pianists instead. … [T]he arrangement is Brahms's own. … [T]he transcription works better than expected. Brahms's gray orchestral sound is not far removed from the monochromatic quality of the piano's lower registers. Tempos move unsentimentally, with the chorus's vibrato-free boy-treble timbre buoying up music that in the wrong hands can sink into the lugubrious. Orchestral pieces played on a piano do have forensic uses. With color altered, moving parts and construction methods are easier to hear, as with architecture (the Pompidou Center in Paris, for example) that wears its skeleton outside its skin. … Susan Gritton and Hanno Müller-Brachmann are the appealing soloists in the Brahms" ("How to Breathe Life into the Requiem," 12/17/06).