Ein deutsches requiem by Brahms

Kaspars Putniņš says: “A fact not quite widely known is that Brahms wrote his famous “German Requiem” in two versions. The one without orchestra is not an arrangement or transcription, but instead, an original version of this work written by Brahms himself. As the orchestra is substituted by the piano, the opus acquires a new quality resounding much more delicate, subtle and intimate. As far as it is known, this version of the piece has not been performed in Latvia. I chose cooperation with both of the outstanding singers – Inga Kalna and Egils Siliņš, as well as with both Latvian pianists residing in London – Diāna Ketlere and Reinis Zariņš – since all of them are distinguished interpreters of 19th century music, wonderful partners in chamber music performing, extremely knowledgeable and considerate artists who understand each other fairly well.”

This chamber version of the requiem was written by Brahms following the request of his publisher in Leipzig, Jacob Melhior Rieter-Biedermann, which most likely implied the wish to provide an opportunity to a wide range of amateurs – unprofessional but skilful music lovers – to perform this wonderful music at home, or, to be more precise, in salons. A number of classical music masterpieces were got to know not in concert halls but during home music performances, and the popularity of these processes were especially influenced by the changes in the improvement of the piano mechanisms and widening of the range of possibilities of this instrument having occurred at the beginning of the 19th century.

Thus, the audience will be able to fancy the Great Guild Hall as an exquisite German salon of the second part of the 19th century, where perspicacious people, who are open to the beauty, try to guess the secrets of Johannes Brahms’s music.The creation of the “German Requiem” was most probably connected with the death of a composer’s close friend, Robert Schumann, and later also with Brahm’s mother’s passing away. The first indications about the creation of an opus in the genre of a German requiem have been found in a letter to Klara Schumann written in 1865. A German requiem implies just a requiem with the text in German. Brahms himself wrote also the libretto choosing fragments of the Old and New Testaments corresponding to the theme of the relationship between life and death, instead of canonical texts of a funeral mass.