Brahms Requiemby Beirut768

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October 29, 2008: When Philipp Spitta - the Bach biographer and great musicologist of the 19th century, became familiar with the Requiem, he wrote a deeply felt letter claiming that he was ""one of many who had become a better person through having made the acquaintance of that music""

Max Bruch was another, he took the trouble of going to Bremen for the first performance, and dedicated his first symphony to Brahms as a sign of his great admiration.

The splendid music of Brahms's Requiem is also inspired in response to Bismarck's success in defeating France (1870) and creating a unified Germany (Likewise the `'Triumphlied'', Op.55, a work in four movements for eight-part choruses and orchestra. This is, now possibly his least known work. It was quickly incorporated into the repertory at the time, and began its life alongside the Requiem in yet another Good Friday performance in Bremen Cathedral).

In his letter to his close friend Joachim, Brahms said: ""I have written (Rhapsody) acclaiming Bismarck; so that in any case steer me to Germany, and then I'll hear music where you are, as well"" A nationalist north German living in Austria, Brahms was obviously attentive to the ongoing struggle for dominance between Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchy. ... {{The Bohemian-Austrian Ministers in Vienna would not yet have forgotten the events of 1866 when Bismarck's Prussian army invaded Bohemia and defeated the Austrian army.}}

Brahms was proud to discover his Requiem was also to honor the war dead.

The melody, along with several variations, is also the second movement of one of Haydn's most famous "String Quartet, nicknamed the "Emperor Quartet". The melody was later used in "Das Lied der Deutschen"" which is still Germany's National Anthem. Brahms reference to 1866 concerns Austria's decisive defeat by Prussia at the battle of Sadowa (Konigsgratz) in Bohemia, underscoring the first time that Habsburg military might was overcome by another German-speaking nation: a requiem for the centuries of Habsburg supremacy?

Brahms worked on German Requiem (First major performance of Requiem in 1868 - he was then only 35). His mother's death (Feb 2, 1865) urged him on to a work he may well have been thinking about since Schumann's death. Albert Dietrich remembered seeing the march which constitutes the second movement when it was the slow scherzo of the two-piano sonata-turned-symphony-turned-piano concerto, ten years earlier - a connection to the turmoil and anguish surrounding Robert Schumann's illness and death.

Florence May, whose biography has the advantage of having been conceived and written while many of the main players were still alive, is quite explicit. She wrote: "We all think he wrote it (the requiem) in her (his mother's) memory, though he has never expressly said so". Clara Schumann told the author some years later"".

Karajan's interpretation is splendid, excellent, and is of the highest quality. Karajan gave us this DVD one year before he died. But, will persons with such exceptional intellectual abilities and originality ever die??

This review was written about the DVD Subtitled / Pan & Scan edition.