MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
DVD: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. 45 (1868) [82:40]
Christine Schäfer (soprano); Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Bavarian Radio Chorus; Munich Philharmonic Orchestra/Christian Thielemann
rec. live, Philharmonie im Gasteig, Munich, April 2007
UNITEL CLASSICA/C MAJOR 703308 [82:40]

Experience Classicsonline


At a few points in this performance the orchestra seems a little loud in relation to the choir. This is notably in the tenors’ important solo passage in the last movement. Otherwise the sound is very fine. There is the usual choice of subtitles, particularly useful in this text-heavy work. The concert is beautifully filmed, with lots of close-ups of the conductor, the soloists and carefully chosen performers, as well as a few long shots of Munich’s rather strangely-shaped hall. Conducting with neither score nor baton, Christian Thielemann presents an impassive, unsmiling figure on the rostrum, only occasionally encouraging the singers by mouthing the words. He beats time with both arms and his gestures seem relatively inexpressive. His eyes, however, are fixed on the performers, and mainly, as far as one can see, on the choir. He demonstrates total technical mastery.

The booklet essay, by Harald Reiter, contains a prophetic sentence: “In the last twenty years two conductors above all have sought to bring out the spiritual content of what is undoubtedly Brahms’s most important work in terms of its outer and inner dimensions … Sergiu Celibidache and Christian Thielemann.”

The opening movement begins in sober fashion, the slow descent to the depths before the choir’s first entry clear and perfectly balanced. Then, just as one is struck by the consistency of pulse, as the opening music returns Thielemann adopts a measured tempo, and the close of the movement is slow and solemn indeed. Only Sinopoli, of the recorded versions I know, takes more time over this first movement. Kempe, in a 1955 Berlin performance I reviewed some months ago (Naxos 8.111342) at 11:45 takes almost the same time, but Klemperer takes just ten minutes, and Masur, in a live performance from New York in 1995 (Teldec) needed even a minute less than that. Timing is only part of the story but more than once in this first movement the word ‘lugubrious’ came into my mind, which, in this of all works, it shouldn’t. The second movement, “Denn alles fleisch”, begins at a more flowing tempo. The choir is superbly disciplined, whether it be in the first, quiet statement of the main theme or in the fortissimo repeat, complete with very prominent timpani. Magnificent too is the choral singing in the second part of the movement, marvellously attentive to the conductor’s demands, both here and throughout. The ravishing final passage, simply marked tranquillo in the score, provokes a marked slowing from the conductor.

Christian Gerhaher is clear and expressive in the third movement, and the choir provides a beautifully controlled yet intense piano. No one seems hampered by what is again a very slow basic pulse. Even Sinopoli takes less time over this movement than Thielemann does, and there are surely passages that are simply too deliberate here. The gorgeous episode for the choir at the words “Ich hoffe” is magnificently sung but terribly drawn out. The whole movement carries not one indication of change of tempo, though you would never know it from this performance. The basic pulse of the final fugue, on the other hand, seems just right, and the vigorous, mezzo-staccato articulation in the string accompaniment ensures that the music never settles into the marmoreal heaviness that sometimes afflicts it. Not, that is, until the close, where the conductor slows down massively before a huge and unmarked pause preceding the final chord.

Thielemann just about respects Brahms’s request for a moderate basic pulse for the well-loved “Wie lieblich” (“How lovely are thy dwellings”), and the choir responds with some magnificent singing, with particularly pure-toned sopranos and tenors on the final page. Yet once again there are expressive excesses, including one particularly unfortunate application of the brakes at the words “immer dar” (43:42).

Christine Schäfer’s solo is eloquently sung, even if one might wish for a warmer, more motherly timbre in this crucial role. It was here that I finally lost patience with this performance. No cadence point, it would seem, may pass without delaying the resolution; no important moment may go unacknowledged. A truly horrible hiatus appears as early as the sixteenth bar (46:42), repeated in the corresponding place later in the movement. This may be what is meant by “bringing out” the work’s “spiritual content”. To my ears, however, the purity of the music is lost, leaving something lachrymose and self-indulgent.

Two more offensive changes of gear occur in the huge fugue that closes the sixth movement (at 64:05 and 65:13). Happily, Gerhaher is magnificent once again earlier on. By now I feared for the worst in the final movement, already difficult for the audience, at the end of a long evening, and challenging for the conductor to hold together. Thielemann doesn’t hold it together, though this is not the same as saying that his is not a consistent view. Too many changes of tempo, too many very slow tempi, too much expressive underlining undermines the feeling of forward movement in the most drawn-out reading of this movement I have ever heard. Spiritual? Reverent? No, turgid and dull, I fear, are words that came to my mind.

The concert ends strangely. Thielemann holds his hands high for a long time, as is now the practice, delaying the applause. The image fades away, but applause is there none. Surely, one thinks, the audience can’t be so moved as all that! But then the closing credits roll, against a background of sporadic coughing and, bizarrely, the sound of footsteps as if the conductor has left the platform in silence.

William Hedley




 

 

 

 

 


 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.