Before conquering concert halls with his symphonies,

Johannes Brahms made a name for himself as a choral

conductor. He led vocal ensembles in his hometown of

Hamburg, in Detmold and Vienna, enriching the

repertoire with his own music. Composed between 1865

and 1868, Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem)

is his most extensive choral work and a milestone in his

artistic development.

In this work, Brahms combined text passages from the

Old and New Testaments in an unconventional way: the

'target' of the text and music is no longer the deceased,

for whose salvation we pray, but the survivor, who is to

be consoled. He thus turned away from ecclesiastical

conventions and created a very atypical requiem which

has nothing to do with the Catholic Church's often-set

Latin requiem mass. Instead, it was conceived from the

outset for the concert hall or church concerts. Musically

the Requiem draws from earlier traditions in a highly

personal way while remaining firmly in a Romantic

choral idiom, at times embedded in lush orchestral

textures.

After countless acclaimed recordings devoted to the

religious music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Masaaki

Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan now present their

unique vision of Brahms's masterpiece.