The Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra Joins the Westminster Symphonic Choir to Offer Hope and Comfort—and a Nice Night Out at the Kimmel Center, a Performance of Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem), Opus 45

By Catherine J. Barrier

Ein deutsches Requiem, Op.45 is Brahms’s longest choral work and was composed during three different periods of his life but completed between 1865 and 1868, perhaps as a result of the death of the composer’s mother in February 1865.  Ein deutsches Requiem has little in common with the typical Requiem Mass of the Catholic faith.  It does not use the standard Missa pro defunctis or the common liturgical text.  This Requiem is a large-scale work for orchestra, chorus, and soloists.  It is a sacred but non-liturgical work, and its libretto is in German, composed of texts from both the Old and New Testament Scriptures, as well as from the Apocrypha.  The text was chosen by Brahms from the German Lutheran Bible, rather than from the more typical Latin Catholic liturgy, and the Requiem does not include material about the Last Judgment, but was written, as Brahms stated, to comfort the living.

“The Choir is really the focus in this requiem, unlike in many requiems, where the choir only sings once in a while,” said Anne Sears, the Director of External Affairs at the Westminster Choir College and spokeswoman for the Westminster Symphonic Choir.  “The Choir is singing through virtually the entire work.”

The Westminster Symphonic Choir is composed of juniors, seniors, and graduate students at the Westminster College of the Arts, one of four colleges at Rider University.  The main campus is in Lawrenceville, NJ, and there is also a campus in Princeton.  The Choir, conducted by Joe Miller, is recognized as one of the world’s leading choral ensembles and has recorded and performed with major orchestras in concert, and as the opera chorus, under virtually every internationally known conductor of the last 75 years, setting a standard in choral music.

The Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra

The Dresden Staatskapelle is one of the world’s oldest orchestras, having been founded by Elector Moritz von Sachsen (or Maurice of Saxony) in 1548.  On September 22, 2008, the orchestra celebrated its 460^th Jubilee.  In the 19^th-century, some of the orchestra’s more famous Chief Conductors were Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner.  In the 20^th-century, Richard Strauss was closely connected with the orchestra.  In fact, it is sometimes called the “Strauss Orchestra” because composer Richard Strauss was linked to the orchestra for more than 70 years, and so many of his operas were premiered in Dresden (e.g., Elektra, Salome, Der Rosenkavalier).  He even dedicated his Alpine Symphony to the Dresden Staatskapelle and conducted the orchestra numerous times, but not as its Chief Conductor.  More recently, from 2007 until February 2010, Fabio Luisi held the position of Chief Conductor for the Staatskapelle, but the position is currently vacant.  Today, the Staatskapelle is the orchestra of the Saxon State Opera, and in 2007 was recognized as one of the top five orchestras in Europe, voted so by the editors of several European music magazines.  The orchestra was the first recipient of the “Prize of the European Culture Foundation for the Preservation of the World’s Musical Heritage” that same year.

“The Brahms Requiem is one of my favorite pieces—and also one of the most famous and important German works,” said Christiane Karg, the soprano soloist for the upcoming performance.  “I sang it a lot of times in the choir when I was a child, and I remember that I was deeply impressed by the words and touched by the wonderful music.  Even now, every time I listen to it, it hasn’t lost this effect for me and will always be very special.”

The Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Daniel Harding, will be joined by the Westminster Symphonic Choir and soloists Christiane Karg (soprano) and Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone) to perform Johannes Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der heiligen Schrift, (A German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scriptures), Opus 45, on Tuesday Night, November 2, at 8:00 p.m., in the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall, located at 300 South Broad Street, in Philadelphia.  Tickets: $39-$113.  To order tickets, or for more information, see www.kimmelcenter.org, call (215) 893-1999, or stop by the Kimmel Center Box Office at Broad and Spruce Streets (19102).  Open daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and later on performance evenings.

A limited number of $10 community rush tickets for the concert will be available at the Box Office starting at 5:30 p.m. on the day of the performance.  Limit: one ticket per person.

Maestro Daniel Harding

Conductor Daniel Harding was born in Oxford and made his debut with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 1994.  Since then, he has conducted and directed numerous symphonies throughout Western Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, and beyond.  He is a regular Guest Conductor with the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra and has extensive experience conducting operatic works.  He holds numerous positions as Principal Conductor and Principal Guest Conductor with symphonies worldwide and is the Music Director of the Swedish Symphony Radio Orchestra.  He records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon.  Harding’s 2010-2011 season includes an eight-city fall tour with the Dresden Staatskapelle.  With the Dresden Staatskapelle and the Westminster Symphonic Choir, he opens the Kimmel Center’s orchestral season this November 2.

“The Westminster Symphonic Choir is a choir of about 150 voices, made up of juniors, seniors, and graduate students [at the College],” said Anne Sears.  The Symphonic Choir is the choir that sings with different orchestras.  The Westminster Choir, a smaller ensemble made up of about 40 voices forms the core of the Symphonic Choir but is a separate group.”

“[The Westminster Symphonic Choir] was invited to sing the Brahms Requiem with the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra by the Orchestra’s management,” explained Sears.  “They knew we were one of the most prominent choirs in America and wanted to be with the best.”

Soprano Soloist Christiane Karg

Christiane Karg, the soprano soloist for the November 2 performance, was born in Feuchtwangen, Bavaria (in Germany) and started her musical career at an early age with piano, recorder, and dance lessons.  In 1998, she won a national prize for young musicians and after high school attended the Music Conservatory in Verona, Italy.  She later earned her Master of Music in Opera and Musical Theatre Studies from the Mozarteum.  She received the Lilli Lehmann Medal from the Mozarteum Foundation for her distinctive achievements.

Karg distinguished herself early in her career with well-known parts in church oratorios by Johnann Sebastian Bach, Handel, Pergolesi, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert and Mendelssohn.  She has performed with numerous orchestras in Germany.  Among her concerts have been performances with the Bamberger Symphoniker (Mendelssohn’s 23^rd Psalm), with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus at the Musikverein Wien (Vienna), in the role of Silvia in Haydn’s opera L’isola disabitata, and with the NDR Radiophilharmonie singing Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.  She enjoys lieder (songs) recitals and has performed at many regional music festivals in Germany. She also recorded a CD of lieder—accompanied by Burkhard Kehring—released on the Berlin Classics label.

Karg has also interpreted numerous operatic roles, such as that of Melia in Mozart’s Apollo and Hyacinth, that of Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) and that of Musetta in La Bohème— the last two with the Frankfurt Opera.  She received outstanding reviews for her portrayal of Ighino in Pfitzner’s Palestrina at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, under Simone Young, in 2009.  She will be making her U.S. debut in the upcoming Brahms Requiem performance at the Kimmel Center.

“The soprano solo is not a large part; it consists of only one aria, but a very difficult one,” said Karg.  “Technically, it is a challenge.  The tessitura is quite high, and you have to concentrate on every note, but at the same time, it should sound very easy, natural, and fluent.  The singer has to comfort [the audience] with a warm legato sound, but also produce a pure and clear sound, like the voice of an angel.”

“I studied the aria a long time ago, but I only performed it for the first time this summer—at the Salzburg Festival,” said Karg.

Baritone Soloist
Hanno Müller-Brachmann

Hanno Müller-Brachmann was born in Germany in 1970 and began his musical training in Basel and Freiburg.  Following his success in several international competitions, Müller-Brachmann performed in concert halls throughout Europe, Japan, and the United States.  He makes regular guest appearances at festivals, such as the Schleswig-Holstein and Salzburg Festivals and has performed with the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the New York Philharmonic, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and the Concerto Köln.

Müller-Brachmann made his operatic debut in 1996, in Georg Philipp Telemann’s Orpheus, under René Jacobs at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin (Berlin State Opera), where he has been a member of the ensemble since 1998.  Among the roles he has played there are those of Leporello, Figaro, Guglielmo, and Papageno in Mozart’s operas and the role of Schaunard in La Bohème.

In addition to opera and oratorio, Müller-Brachmann devotes himself to lied (song) and can be heard in recitals at the Berlin Staatsoper and Philharmonie.  He has also given song recitals all over the world.  He made his debut at both the Chicago Symphony Hall and at Carnegie Hall in New York in February 2000.  In 2004, he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera as Guglielmo, under Seiji Ozawa, and his debut at the San Francisco Opera in the same role, under Michael Gielen.  Müller-Brachmann has also appeared in various radio and television productions and has recorded CDs for Harmonia Mundi, including a Schubert recital disc.  He will be featured as the baritone soloist in the upcoming performance of the Brahms Requiem.

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms, a Romantic German composer and virtuoso pianist, was born into a poor family in Hamburg, Germany in 1833.  He began music lessons at the piano at age 7, with his father, Johnann Jakob Brahms (1806-1872), who played a number of instruments.  At age 19, he made a concert tour and began to be known as a pianist.  He later moved to Vienna and was introduced to Early Romantic composer Robert Schumann, who welcomed Brahms into his home.  Schumann became both a friend and a mentor to Brahms and introduced him to the Viennese public.  Brahms soon became a musical leader with considerable popularity and influence.  He composed music for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestras, and for voice and chorus, and was involved in the premieres of many of his works—as a soloist, accompanist, or chamber music participant.  He was also a skilled conductor of choral and orchestral works, and many of his compositions are found in modern concert repertoire.

Brahms used traditional Baroque and Classical compositional forms and techniques and was a master of both counterpoint and development.  He greatly admired Beethoven, Mozart, and Hadyn, but especially Beethoven, and studied Johann Sebastian Bach’s work in great detail.  The Early Romantic composers, such as his friend and mentor Schumann and Franz Shubert, greatly influenced his music style as well.  Brahms introduced some new, bold harmonies, irregular rhythms and phrasing, and at times approached melody a bit non-traditionally.

Brahms favored “absolute music” in contrast with many Romantic composers, who preferred music in some way attached to particular scenes or narratives, and he thus avoided composing operas or symphonic poems.  At times, his works, when performed, drew mixed reviews because his music was often considered “old-fashioned”, compared to the music of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner.   But Brahms found his opponents’ music to be too full of “excesses”.  Brahms’s works were often large and had complex musical structures.  In contrast, probably one of his most well-known shorter works is Brahms’s Lullaby.

In his 50s, Brahms wrote clarinet trios, quintets, and sonatas, cycles of piano pieces, and other works, including settings for piano and voice of numerous German folk songs.  His Hungarian dances were very popular and these compositions sold well.

In 1889, with the help of Thomas Edison’s company, his recording of his first Hungarian dance on piano became, and still remains, the earliest recording made by a major composer.

He died of complications from cancer on April 3, 1897.  He was 63.

The unifying element of the Requiem is a 3-note musical motif, which consists of up a major third and then usually up another one-half step.  This motif pervades every movement throughout the work.

The Requiem is a carefully balanced musical piece, with many of the musical ideas of the first movement restated in the last movement, providing unity to the work.  The text of the first movement is taken from “The Beatitudes” in the Sermon on the Mount.  The second movement is a funeral march in B-flat minor and focuses on the short duration of human existence.  The third movement, which contains a fugue, includes a baritone solo that focuses on physical death, but then the work moves into the lighter fourth movement, which is the turning point of the “message” of the piece.  The fourth movement is a transitional one, moving the listeners from solemn grief toward hope and future comfort.  The soprano solo in the fifth movement, accompanied by woodwinds, horns, muted strings, and chorus, describes the feelings of those still living after someone’s death.  The theme of resurrection is in the sixth movement, which contains a fugue.  This movement is the most dramatic of the work and even refers to the Christian belief in the future catching-up and taking away of believers to be with the Lord (sometimes referred to as the Rapture).  The Requiem then concludes with a reworking of the music found in the first movement and finishes by communicating a sense of enduring peace.

The work was first premiered in a 6-movement version in the Bremen Cathedral on Good Friday, April 10, 1868.  The fifth movement was later added—in May 1868—and the full work, with all 7 movements, was premiered the following year.  Despite its unorthodox text, this Requiem served to confirm Brahms’s international reputation as an exceptional composer, and the public recognition spurred him on to complete numerous works that had been in progress for some time.

The Requiem is scored for soprano and baritone soloists, mixed chorus, 2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp (one part, preferably doubled), organ, and strings.  A high-level of craftsmanship has been noted in the work by many music critics over the years, and the work has been recorded often.

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, a world-class performing arts venue in the heart of Philadelphia, opened its door on December 16, 2001 as the centerpiece of the downtown’s Avenue of the Arts.  Described by architect Rafael Viñoly as “the [two] jewels inside a glass box”, the two freestanding performance halls enclosed beneath vaulted glass serve as the home for such world-famous companies as The Philadelphia Orchestra, Peter Nero and the Philly Pops®, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, PHILANDANCO, the American Theater Arts for Youth, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania Ballet.

Joe Miller, Conductor
Westminster Symphonic Choir

The Westminster Choir College is a professional college of music that prepares students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for careers in teaching, sacred music, and performance.  Joe Miller, now in his 5^th year at the College, is both the Director of Choral Activities and the Chair of Conducting.  He oversees the extensive choral program, which includes 8 different choral groups that each performs different kinds of music and/or is made up of different groups of students.

Joe Miller is also a visiting and guest conductor of other choral groups.  “He just came back from Berlin, where he conducted the Berlin Radio Symphony Chorus,” said Sears.

“[Joe Miller] works frequently with colleges and high schools, doing lectures,” said Sears.  “And we [at Westminster College] just finished recording a second CD with him [directing the Choir], entitled Noel, a collection of French Christmas music on the Westminster College Label (to order:  http://www.westminsterchoircollege.org/).

“The message of this requiem is one of hope, peace, and solace—very different than many other requiems,” said Sears.  “The focus is on the people left behind [after someone’s death] and not on the kinds of things usually focused on in such works.  Many choirs really enjoy singing it because it’s so inspiring.”

“This will be my first time working with all of these wonderful musicians,” said Karg.  “I’m very excited, and I’m looking forward to performing the Brahms Requiem with them.”

The upcoming concert promises to be an uplifting one that should not be missed.

* Photos of the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra and Conductor Daniel Harding Courtesy of the Kimmel Center.
** Photo of Conductor Joe Miller Courtesy of the Westminster Symphonic Choir.
***  Photo of Christiane Karg - Copyright Steven Haberland.  Used with permission.
**** Photo of Hanno Müller-Brachmann - Copyright Monika Rittershaus.  Used with permission.

© 2010 by Catherine J. Barrier.  All rights reserved.