This week on GPB, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus perform A German Requiem by Johannes Brahms, with music director Robert Spano conducting.
The traditional Requiem is part of the old Catholic liturgy. But Johannes Brahms ditched both the old texts and the old language in his German Requiem. He picked out new excerpts from Hebrew and Lutheran scripture to set, deliberately keeping the focus on the comforting and the universal (he said he could've just as well titled his work "A Human Requiem"). Instead of Latin he used the vernacular, German.
This concert from last November features the Grammy-winning team of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and conductor Robert Spano, plus soprano Twyla Robinson and baritone Mariusz Kwiecien. (They all recorded Brahms' requiem for disc that weekend as well, forthcoming on Telarc.) We'll meet the two soloists before they perform.
The program opens with two shorter works that Robert Spano felt fit an evening honoring the dead: Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music and Jennifer Higdon's "river sings song to trees," the calmer middle section of CityScape, her piece about Atlanta.
Please join us, Thursday, March 27 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 30 at 10 p.m. on GPB.
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