Reviews

THE TIMES

Brahms and his antecedents - a twenty-first century approach (31 Oct 2007)

Five stars

Aimez-vous Brahms? The question (the title of a controversial study of Modernism) is significant. We’re constantly feeling obliged to do a rain-check: after all, generations of worthies, from George Bernard Shaw to Britten, have loved to hate his music. But if by 2009 you don’t love Brahms, then there’s no hope for you. John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique have just started a two-year project placing the composer in the context of music he himself cherished. And if the first two concerts are anything to go by, we are in for a remarkable and revelatory two years.

When I saw the first programme, I have to say I groaned. There was the German Requiem, surrounded by a Burial Song, and whole lot of Bach and Schütz. But, only a few bars into that funereal Begräbnisgesang, the flesh began to creep, and we knew we were in for something extraordinary. The Monteverdi Choir stood in a semicircle, gilded by an arc of ancient brass, and, in a firm and beautifully inflected line, sang of death and resurrection.

Spectres of the Requiem’s flesh as grass themes scudded past – and suddenly we were hearing the music of Schütz, too, prefiguring those heavenly dwellings of the Lord of Hosts. Brahms’s copy of Schütz’s Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen was apparently well-worn and heavily annotated – and no wonder. More preechoings in a sacred song, Es ist genug, which Bach used in his Cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort; and the Monteverdi Choir and ORR gave us both, but in Brahms’s own reverent and dramatic arrangements.

The winning formula of instruments singing as voices, and voices pealing forth, fresh and pungent as instruments, prepared ear and spirit gloriously for a climactic and revelatory performance of Brahms’s German Requiem.

The next day Schubert – hugely championed by Brahms – appeared on the scene. Gardiner, the ORR and the men of the Monteverdi Choir gave a rare opportunity to hear Schubert’s awe-inspiring part-song, Gesang der Geister über den Wassern. And then two Schubert songs orchestrated by Brahms in full Gothic horror: the scene from Hades of Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, and the hell-for-leather ride of An Schwager Chronos, with horns as postillion, and flashes of wild flute light.

The contralto Nathalie Stutzmann’s deeply moving performance of the Alto Rhapsody, and a daring and thought-provoking rendition of the First Symphony, ended a concert which was in every way a thrilling beginning.
Hilary Finch

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