Opera Ballet Vlaanderen opens the concert season with a starring role for the choir in the monumental Ein Deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms.
For his requiem, Brahms did not choose the customary text of the Latin Mass for the Dead, but set his own compilation of German religious texts to music. Death and eternity are treated, entirely in the spirit of his time, from humanistic perspectives. For Brahms, faith and humanity formed an organic unity.
Ein deutsches Requiem consists of seven movements that relate to the musical setting in a surprising way. The whole forms one large arc of tension. Brahms was aware of the centuries-old tradition in which he inscribed his own requiem and also found compositional inspiration in it. Now and then you hear as a listener echoes of Renaissance polyphony passing by or of Baroque composers such as Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach. Thus Brahms' first important orchestral and choral work became a powerfully constructed architecture of intelligently used counterpoint and rich harmony, with an extremely varied orchestral palette and a strongly diversified choral writing. His requiem became a monument full of compassion for mankind and his inescapable fate.
Maestro Alejo Pérez conducts the internationally acclaimed Symfonisch Orkest Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, the Koor Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and two outstanding soloists. In the soprano part we see and hear the Dutch soprano Lenneke Ruiten. The baritone is the young Austrian Wolfgang Stefan Schwaiger who makes his house debut.
In the Sint-Baafskathedraal in Gent we present the concert as part of Gent Festival van Vlaanderen.