Ensemble Pygmalion: Ein deutsches Requiem

The ensemble Pygmalion and Raphaël Pichon combine Schütz and Mendelssohn with Brahms, who knew and appreciated his classics.

Brahms' choral classics
It is perhaps no coincidence that Johannes Brahms added an extra part to Ein deutsches Requiem shortly after his mother's death: beautiful music is often born of grief. This is certainly true of this choral classic, which was Brahms' big breakthrough. Begräbnisgesang, on the other hand, was the very first work in which he succeeded in forging choir and orchestra into a single whole of colour and emotion.

Praise for Mendelssohn and Schütz
Two other compositions on life, suffering and death complete the circle of this programme. For his archaic-looking and at the same time romantic Drei Kirchenmusiken, 21-year-old Felix Mendelssohn mirrored himself on the multi-choir oeuvre of Heinrich Schütz and his contemporaries. Brahms was a great admirer of Mendelssohn and Schütz, in whose collection of motets Geistliche Chormusik the suffering of the Thirty Years' War shines through.

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