What does it mean to write a Requiem in your early thirties, in your own language, and not about death, but about life?
In this second episode of Discover Music with Simon Rattle, a series produced by ARD Klassik, the conductor revisits one of the most deeply human and profoundly moving works in the choral repertoire: Ein deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms. As he rehearses with the Chor and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Rattle reflects on how this work—shaped by the deaths of Brahms’s mother and Robert Schumann—asks not what is death, but what is left for the living?
“Normally, a Requiem is about death, and in Latin,” says Rattle. “But this is about the living. It’s how we deal with what has happened.”
What follows is a powerful rehearsal-essay about grief, consolation, and spiritual endurance, shaped by Brahms’s intricate dialogue between chorus and orchestra. Rattle highlights not only the score’s formal innovation—its free structure, baroque influences, and tonal ambiguity—but also its emotional layering: the motherly tenderness of the fifth movement, the hushed mystery of the last harmonic, and the unbearable fragility of the word “again” in “I will see you again.”
He also speaks movingly about the last concert his own mother attended, which happened to be a performance of this very piece. In this moment, Rattle’s personal memory joins the music’s own purpose: to accompany the grieving and affirm the living.
Want to hear the full work?
Since the Rattle performance is not publicly available in full, we recommend this live 2018 performance conducted by Bernard Haitink at the Philharmonie im Gasteig in Munich, featuring Camilla Tilling and Hanno Müller-Brachmann:
Johannes Brahms – Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45
Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Conductor: Bernard Haitink
Soloists: Camilla Tilling (soprano), Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone)
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