Discover Music with Simon Rattle - #2 Brahms - Requiem - BRSO & BR-Chor

So let's talk today about the Brahms Requiem. Now why did a man in his early 30s decide to write a Requiem? What was this about? What was Brahms meaning? Now there are two important dates. One was in February of 1865. Brahms's beloved mother died. But behind it all there's another date which maybe went as deeply as that which was the death of Schumann in 1856. Somewhere or other this piece is tied up with who Brahms is. And a Requiem is normally about death. It's normally in Latin. But this is not about death. This is about life. This is about the is how how do you deal with what has happened. What's the words? Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. How are we going to deal with this? What is left for the living? How do you understand death? And can it flow from the beginning that there's no feeling of George Bernard Shaw? I mean our great British writer who was also music critic. He did say the thing about this piece you can tell that it came from the very very best quality of undertaker. Because he always just found it too slow. And I'm sure it's not what Brahms was after. When I was working on it with these wonderful people for whom the piece is very familiar and very much part of their lives. I was really wanting to work on an unusual feature of this. That the orchestra and the chorus really speak with each other. And in some ways the chorus has to play and the orchestra has to sing. And it's hard to know what is what. And last consonant with profile. Yeah but it's the same sound as at the beginning. This has to be their sound. Another kind of pianissimo. Okay great. This constant conversation is really unusual. With the singing cellos and violas over it in F major. And then suddenly falling to D flat major. As though you're in another region. And then returning. So very orchestral music. And then you would imagine the chorus would join the orchestra. But in fact the chorus sings on its own. And it's as though they are speaking to each other. And trying to understand how will we deal with this. Another sound for Henrik. This phrase in Brahms always is what will be my comfort. And for me I think this is the drama of the whole piece. How will we come to terms with this? And what is the answer? Basses. Would you just say to me once. Zige and hin. Don't sing. Right. I love the gay. Could we sing it like that? Yeah fantastic. I love it. Makes such a difference. There are a number of places in the piece just like that. Where the chorus has single phrases. And it's like Brahms has torn up his little annotated bible into single words. And I find that very touching. As though again people are almost searching in darkness for where it will go. I just asked the chorus to sing kind of 16th century music here once. And it would be great if we didn't cover it with too much spaghetti sauce. Just sing us. Could I ask in here not too legato. So that we hear the words and so it dances. Yeah it's beautiful. Now Brahms he knew his bible very well. But what is interesting is that he chose his own texts from the bible to give a really particular journey. There's a lovely quote he wrote. He said I must confess I would gladly dispense with the term German Requiem. And simply substitute the word mankind for German instead. So in other words German was the vernacular. And he wanted to talk to everybody. And the piece like so much of his music has a kind of sadness that glows with understanding. When conducting it for instance I have to realize that for a great central masterpiece that there is an unusually wide range of ways of speaking the piece even to do with the length that it can be anything from 62 minutes to 80 minutes or more. And it depends what you take from this. The first music in the piece where he says the word I or me or mine and teach me to understand that I must perish. In fact the first performance was a famous catastrophe. Brahms hadn't written for orchestra very much. It's kind of hard to remember. And he wrote the timpani fortissimo and apparently for all this whatever it is two or three minutes of music all anybody heard was so by the time the second performance came all the dynamics were carefully shaded and marked. It's good to know that even great composers like Brahms can make miscalculations. We forget that he was a young man. He was not this big man with a beard. He was a young handsome man with rather far away eyes. Thank goodness for chorus masters mistresses. It's so important that we trust each other. The person who is putting the chorus together. You better tell me what your hand things. Okay more text. Okay right good. We're very very dignified people here. Okay that's good that's bad and that's text. The difficulty with a fugato like that is of course if the orchestra play too loud it's it's all killed. You can't hear anything but if the chorus have to sing it's also it's it's not real. They have to be able to sing in a way where they can phrase and the music has some direction. Otherwise it is only a pedal point and the point about this is that it has a kind of rhythm and motion and liveness above that. So it must be all those things at once. So it is really complicated. There were three bars where she was delighted arrested adolescents. They tell you everything at once and in some ways Brahms is the most grown up of all composers because in a piece like this he's saying it is not only one thing. It is all really complicated and everything has a step to it. A step of how you accept loss and how not only as German but as mankind you can make this journey that we all make. The shortest movement in the piece is the fourth but it's like the center of the arch. How lovely is thy dwelling place. But this is something special because it's what is heaven like. Every other movement starts in some way in the depths and this is the opposite. It's starting really high in the flute and the clarinet and it's very friendly, almost naive. If it's not heaven it's your house in heaven which is also a very particular type of thought but it includes all kinds of things. It includes impatience like he's talking about my soul is longing. It's fainting. It moves and then it relaxes but there's even kind of wonderful humor. I have a very favorite moment where the pizzicato play and the clarinets just play like kind of little stones falling into water and again he uses his baroque forms for the point where they say we'll praise you eternally. Whenever there's praise he's looking for music which lasts in eternity. This is funny you see there's an empty chair. The soprano was not released for this rehearsal from the opera company she was working in. Great now just sing me the I would be great. Good so could we not be above that. This is the one movement in the piece where there is no kind of baroque music. Totally personal. At the very beginning the violins always feel to me like really a mother cradling somebody and much less. What I do remember is that now very touchingly for me the last music my mother heard live was the performance of the German Requiem and I can remember her. I could see her sitting in Birmingham taking the piece in. Little did I know at that point that she also didn't have long to live. But somehow this piece unmothers what motherhood means and what nourishing means. It's of vital importance. From A sharp. For me one of the most moving moments is the very end where she says I will see you again three times but less and less and disappearing. And on the very last chord G major chord the violins play harmonics which is a sound which comes from another place and it's though she has simply evaporated into the air. One of the most extraordinary movements in any music of any time. This is the Dies Irae. Death where is thy sting. You have been defeated but you hear with the effort of the defeated. With even this little moment where violins are going he asks them to play particularly the open strings because he knows this will cut through everything. What an astonishing moment is this. This is something that people don't realise again because the piece is so well known. Nobody understands what a particular type of vocal stress it is to sing this piece for a chorus. Is that you have to train like an athlete to do it. You cannot sing it twice in a day. You have to organise your rehearsals so you haven't given everything. Also you have to be canny in the way you use your stamina because after this very loud violent full singing then comes the last movement where it's a kind of vision of heaven but where you have to sustain these extraordinary long lines. So it is the stamina piece for a chorus to have to get through. You realise that everybody is giving a certain amount of energy there but actually this can only be where there are people in the audience that you give actually what is needed. He asks basically more of everybody than is possible. Could we say the words as you would say them? Not too much Turandot at the start. Quite centred. Would you exaggerate nehmen for me and more preis. So let's do zunehmen. Could we not era but era. So again it's the shape of the words. Let's do the whole thing. Great. I always feel a bit guilty when I'm talking about the pronunciation of German words. What I'm trying to do is find the skeleton underneath the flesh of the piece and this is the one place what I love in that is not only this very strict thing of saying now you will praise him but the moments of ecstasy where suddenly it becomes like the most romantic most personal music you can deal with and then every now and then just falls away on little moments of doubt. Do we even have the right to praise him? We translate in our bible here on earth we have no continuing place. We are nowhere. I don't know why it's every time I hear this I think Kurtweil. I think Mahogany. I think a disappeared city. We have no city. We are just searching for one. We're completely lost and then the baritone is able to say I unfold to you a mystery and we realize we're at the end of the world. Brahms has very strategically and cleverly reserved this moment for nearly the end of the world is right near the beginning. In this it's right near the end and you realize that you're not dealing with the death of people you are dealing with the death of death. That death has been vanquished and with incredibly violent dissonant music you are released from death into everlasting life and it's a completely astonishing movement particularly after something which is as violent as Verdi and suddenly moves back to the 18th century for this idea of what is everlasting. Very very special way of dealing with it. In Brahms this different level of where people are singing from is something which is very noticeable. Right let's add the choruses. Could you a little breathy? Just amazed so Bela with chorus also. Oh yeah when you didn't know where I'd started it was fantastic. That's the volume. Perfect okay so that volume one yeah it's fantastic yeah it's wonderful yeah if yeah Moses in the graveyard and you're still in the grave singing. Just after this passage where the chorus is seen I was asking to sing as though they were still in the grave there is a picture in the orchestra with the strings going which feels as though people are being ripped from their graves and moved upwards but similarly in the movement with the soprano which is his most personal movement I mean this he makes it clear he's about his mother it really sounds as though the chorus is singing around the grave and the voice is coming from a place where there is not mourning anymore. Could we make a darker color in piano it's a bit it's a bit too Mary Poppins for me uh just a look something a little darker than that yeah good I know that's what it says I don't I don't want that color I need a bit more I just want you to to speak to us kind of from there or wherever it is. I'm lucky they have a sense of humor what could we say I was trying to get a little more of the old testament sound the the way in which the chorus speak with the trombones and with which they answer. What is very powerful for me now is to be playing it with German musicians for whom the text is as deep in the DNA as the British Bible text is for us and who can pronounce in that way who understand what that mean and similarly the orchestra understand how the words are shaped that's a whole new element for me and I felt I learned an enormous amount through these performances I can't wait to do it again because this is a piece you can come back to and come back to and will never exhaust you so I hope you could enjoy this little talk it's such a gigantic piece it's hard to say anything in a short time but I hope I could express some of my thoughts and emotions about the piece and I hope for those of you who don't know it and indeed those of you who know it backwards you might want to hear how the performance ended up if you press around there you can also hear this but I hope you will have this work in your lives and your hearts.