Gürzenich’s principal conductor, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, will present the »Gesang aus Fingal«, Op. 17b, in the version for mixed choir and orchestra to mark the 40th anniversary of the Cologne Philharmonic.

Meticulous detective work led to a spectacular discovery in 2023 in the Gürzenich Orchestra’s music archive: preliminary prints and handwritten parts, and finally a complete score of Johannes Brahms’s »Gesang aus Fingal« for mixed choir and orchestra. Brahms had originally written this elegiac dirge as part of a cycle of four songs for female choir accompanied by two horns and harp, and premiered it in Hamburg in 1860. The work was well received by critics and friends of the composer, such as the violinist Joseph Joachim, yet there were repeated suggestions to expand the instrumentation.

Almost twenty years after the premiere, it was finally Gürzenich Kapellmeister Ferdinand Hiller, who had performed the version for female choir at the Gürzenich, who provided what was probably the decisive impetus. Brahms worked out a new version for a large ensemble and sent his publisher Fritz Simrock the scores for the choral and string parts in 1879. As Brahms had made it a rule not to have works for large ensembles published in print unless he had first heard them in the concert hall, he initially attempted to organise performances in Vienna and Karlsruhe, where he was conducting as a guest. The performance finally took place in Cologne, where Ferdinand Hiller had already included two movements from Brahms’s »German Requiem« in the programme for a concert in March 1879 and invited him to conduct these and the new version of »Fingal«.

On 18 March 1879, the new orchestral version was performed in the main hall of the Gürzenich under the baton of Johannes Brahms; it was warmly received by the press and celebrated by the audience. Yet Brahms himself was not satisfied with the result. »Neither in an empty nor in a full hall« had the song from Fingal had the effect Brahms had desired, and he had tried »many a thing« to »remedy the situation«, reported Brahms’s biographer Max Kalbeck. Brahms withdrew the publication from Simrock and, showing remorse, agreed to reimburse the publisher for the costs of the engraving.

However, the printed and handwritten parts remained in Cologne. Five years later, Franz Wüllner, a friend of Brahms, became the new Gürzenich Kapellmeister and must have come across the material in the orchestra’s music library. He personally compiled a new score from these parts and included the ‘Song from Fingal’ in the programme on 4 January 1887. This renewed performance also met with a positive response in the press. Franz Wüllner assured Brahms that his new version »sounded excellent« and that he should therefore »publish it as it is«. But the self-critical Brahms would not be dissuaded, and so the version fell into oblivion.

The musicologist Jakob Hauschildt, a research fellow on the new Johannes Brahms Complete Edition at the University of Kiel and editor of the relevant volume, traced the Cologne materials following clues in Brahms’s extensive correspondence. Thus, the orchestrated »Fingal« was published for the first time in 2025, as part of the Brahms Complete Edition under the opus number 17b intended by the composer himself.

Gürzenich Kapellmeister Andrés Orozco-Estrada will present the work in concert at the 40th anniversary of the Cologne Philharmonic on 14 September 2026, with a project choir from the Cologne Choirs Network providing the vocals.