Ein Deutsches Requiem : Brahms

Lo spettacolo

Discover or rediscover this masterpiece of the lyric and choral repertoire, the German Requiem by Brahms, at Dijon Opera Auditorium.

A Requiem in German? The composer had been thinking about one for nearly 15 years before putting the final touches in 1868 to this score, whose genesis is extremely complex. The oldest section derives from drafts for a piano sonata on which he worked little after the attempted suicide of his master and friend Schumann. It is on the occasion of another painful event, the death of his mother in April 1865, that this score would again come to haunt him: if the composer said nothing, Clara Schumann would say later: “We are all of the opinion that he wrote it in memory of her, even if he never expressly told us so.” The idea therefore matured a long time in the heart of Brahms, who called himself a non‐believer but read the Lutheran Bible every day. For if faith does not inhabit it, the tragic design of the world, of the soul, and of the views of one who did not hesitate to say “I don’t need to tell you that inside me I never laugh”, could only find expression in these reflections on death and the vanity of human existence.

This deeply moving score, which reaches the highest spiritual if not liturgical summits, where the chorales find the most touching accents to express pain and consolation, is the perfect occasion to bring together the forces of the Orchestra Dijon Bourgogne, the Dijon Opera Choir and the Chœur de chambre Opus 71 of Chalon.