Brahms: A German Requiem (1871 London Version)
Michelle Areyzaga (soprano), Hugh Russell (baritone), Madeline Slettedahl, Craig Terry (piano)
Bella Voce, Andrew Lewis
Baritone soloist Hugh Russell is the star of the disc, declaiming the text with clarity and passion, and inspiring the choir to match him in the third and fifth movements.
Brahms: A German Requiem (1871 London Version)
Michelle Areyzaga (soprano), Hugh Russell (baritone), Madeline Slettedahl, Craig Terry (piano)
Bella Voce, Andrew Lewis
Purchase product
Baritone soloist Hugh Russell is the star of the disc, declaiming the text with clarity and passion, and inspiring the choir to match him in the third and fifth movements.
About
Brahms’ fascination with music of the 16th to the 18th centuries was nurtured during his appointment in Vienna as conductor of the Singakademie. His own choral compositions had gradually moved from an almost pastiche Renaissance style towards a fully mature, Romantic approach, culminating in his large-scale choral masterpiece Ein deutsches Requiem. This performance is sung in a new English translation prepared by Lara Hoggard that fits the original German declamation and with the piano four-hands accompaniment written by Brahms himself.
Contents and tracklist
- Madeline Slettedahl (piano), Craig Terry (piano), Hugh Russell (baritone), Michelle Areyzaga (soprano)
- Bella Voce
- Andrew Lewis
Awards and reviews
December 2019
Baritone soloist Hugh Russell is the star of the disc, declaiming the text with clarity and passion, and inspiring the choir to match him in the third and fifth movements.
March/April 2020
The recording...is superb, with an acoustic that combines marvelous definition, rich and beautiful reproduction of both voices and pianos, and an ideal balance among the performing forces.
January 2020
Madeline Slettedahl and Craig Terry set the sober mood and the steady pace of the second movement’s obsequies. They are unfailingly sensitive to Lewis’s rubato in the movements of repose, but an air of the rehearsal room lingers all the same...This is a well-blended, Chicago-based outfit of 34 voices, fielding a mixed alto section that Brahms would surely not have envisaged, and slightly stronger in the upper than lower parts.
