Written during a period of bereavement, Brahms' German Requiem confronts the issue of mortality from a highly personal perspective. The composer's mother suffered a stroke in 1865, and although Brahms travelled to see her, she had died before he reached her. Brahms' response was to write what Richard Osborne calls 'an act of consolation for the bereaved', using German-language texts from the Bible rather than the conventional Latin text of the Mass for the Dead.
Musically, it is perhaps the composer's most substantial work. The seven movements show an imaginative grasp of orchestration that is remarkable even amongst Brahms' output, while his engagement with Baroque and Renaissance choral music from an early age clearly rubbed off on the many contrapuntal passages of the piece. The work is also important in terms of Brahms' development: the successful creation of the German Requiem finally gave the composer the confidence to start working on his first symphony.
Some early reviews of this new recording by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic have drawn harsh comparisons with Klemperer's classic account and Gardiner's period performance practice approach, but I think this is to miss the point. Rattle is responding both to the orchestra's historical position and to the insights that can come from refreshing performance practices. In my view, this results in one of the most aching and pained accounts of the second movement ('Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras') on record. The string playing is exceptionally clean, with restrained vibrato and a feel for the music's sighing appoggiatura figures, while the Rundfunkchor Berlin sings as a single unit, with not a hint of vocal strain from the higher voices.
Soprano Dorothea Röschmann is magnificent in the fifth movement, 'Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit'. She has a truly Germanic voice and uses it to bring poignancy to the text, yet she also has an ease of line and beautiful tone. My one major reservation about the performance is baritone Thomas Quasthoff, whose manic and wayward vibrato is to the cost of both intonation and phrasing; I can think of a number of baritones who could have done a much better job vocally and expressively. Truly, his rendition of the third movement, 'Herr, lehre doch mich', is one of the most painful and disappointing performances I've heard in a while.
The rest of the recording makes up for him, though. The opening movement ('Selig sind, die da Leid tragen') simmers along nicely, though the recording level seems rather low even for so quiet a piece of music. 'Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen', the fourth movement, finds Rattle at his most insightful, creating both textual and harmonic nuances, while the final movement, 'Selig sind die Toten', is still, resigned, calm.
In all, this is a very beautifully performed and recorded performance. Rattle's detractors are many, but his interpretations nearly always win through in the end.