BRAHMS: Ein deutsches Requiem - Kringelborn. Kwiecien. Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (DVD)

Live recording made on 25th May 2008 at de Doelen Concert Hall, Rotterdam, at Valery Gergiev’s final concert as principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic OrchestraAmong requiems, the one composed by Johannes Brahms is unusual in more than one way. First of all, it was one of the first works with that title that didn’t employ the standard text, in Latin, of the Roman Catholic Mass for the dead. Brahms instead compiled his own text from the German Bible of Martin Luther, placing the focus on the living rather than on the dead, as demonstrated by the beginning of the work: ‘Blessed are those who bear pain: for they shall be comforted.’ The result is a work suffused with the glow of humanism, notably less concerned with sin and punishment than many other works in the same genre. Indeed, in connection with one of the first performances of the work, Brahms said regarding the title that he ‘would gladly give up the German and simply put human’. It is this work, then, that Valery Gerg