As well as being All Hallows’ Eve, this coming Thursday is also Reformation Day, commemorating the start of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation of the church. One consequence of that was Luther’s seminal translation of the Bible into German, a work that has similar cultural resonance to the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible. It therefore felt very apt last night to be hearing one of the best-loved settings of Luther’s words – Johannes Brahms’s ‘German Requiem’, performed in its chamber version by Northern Spirit Singers with pianists David Murray and Richard Bruce in the chapel of Durham School.
The choir opened the concert with two earlier Lutheran pieces that Brahms said had inspired him when writing his Requiem. The choir began in the stalls so that they could make the most of the double-choir writing in Heinrich Schütz’s setting of Psalm 100. ‘Jauchzet dem Herrn’. This started the concert with a bang, pinging back and forth between the two sides, with conductor Clare Lawrence-Wills giving a lovely shape to the lines. Johann Hermann Schein’s mournful setting of ‘Die mit Tränen säen’ (‘Those who sow in tears’) was new to me although it turned out that Brahms borrowed its sobbing melodic line for his own setting of these words that we would hear shortly after. The choir then made a brief diversion to what is their more usual repertoire with a contemplative setting of ‘Locus iste’ by former Durham School student Will Todd.
Looking at the programme, I thought it was a bit odd that the choir had chosen to put an interval after the third movement of the Brahms, but director Katherine Hambridge preempted our doubts by explaining that for the first ‘performance’ of the Requiem only these three movements had been written, and in fact after the triumphal ending of the punchy ‘Der Gerechten Seelen’ fugue, it felt entirely appropriate to pause before resuming with the most famous movement ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen’ (often sung in English as ‘How lovely are thy dwellings’).
The Requiem is a monster sing and to take it on with a choir of just twenty singers was little short of heroic. The small numbers made for some beautifully intimate moments, most notably in the opening movement ‘Selig sind, die der Leid tragen’ after a wonderfully tender and introspective piano introduction and in the focussed intensity of the second movement.
What really made this performance special was the choir’s absolute conviction and their attention to the German text. I relished their crisp consonants which really energised the singing and carried them along through the long fugues. Although the strain sometimes showed and there were a few bits where the voices sounded pushed, the sheer excitement and the commitment shown by every singer and the two pianists made this a thrilling performance, particularly in the massive sixth movement.
Northern Spirit are a talented and versatile bunch, stepping out to take on conducting, piano playing and solos between them (David Murray was the only external musician taking part). Bass Duncan Brown was direct and engaging throughout, moving between song-like lyricism in ‘Herr, Lehre doch mich’ to ringing authority proclaiming the mystery of resurrection in ‘Siehe ich sage euch ein Geheimnis’. Clare Lawrence-Wills’s beautiful light, silvery soprano was glorious in ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’, and she demonstrated immense breath control spinning out the phrases.
As Katherine Hambridge explained in her introduction, Brahms avoided the traditional Mass of the Dead and instead chose passages from Luther’s Bible that focus on grief, mourning, comfort for the bereaved and hope in the resurrection but without any overt Christian theology and he said that it could just as well be called a ‘human’ requiem. This was most evident in tonight’s performance in the final movement, ‘Selig sind die Toten’, which had a real sense of accomplishment, of a long and difficult task now fulfilled. ‘They shall rest from their labours’ says the text and I hope Northern Spirit enjoyed their rest after this magnificent and moving performance.
Northern Spirit Singers, Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem, Saturday 26 October 2024, Durham School Chapel.
