Confidence

This is a benefit performance in aid of the initiative »wir helfen« of the newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.

With a certain lack of reverence, one could rightfully call Ein Deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms a bit of a bait-and-switch. After all, this is no Requiem, a Catholic mass for the dead in Latin – instead, it is one that focuses entirely on the living. Here, we concentrate not on the deceased, on their path towards God’s throne, the horrors of the Last Judgment and their fearful pleas for mercy in the hereafter. Instead, the work speaks to all those who remain on earth, who »bear sorrow« and require consolation in their grief. The inevitability and pain of parting and endings are not masked here. And yet, this German Requiem is full of hope and confidence: humans are not alone in their sorrow, but secure in the certainty of resurrection and reunions in the afterlife. As so often, Brahms’ intimate friend Clara Schumann hit the mark in her assessment of this dignified masterwork and its gentle gestures: »It is a forceful piece, gripping humans in their entirety as few other works can. The profound seriousness, combined with the full magic of poetry, has a wonderful, shocking and consoling effect.”