Customer Reviews

Brahms: A German Requiem (Cambridge Music Handbooks)

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This little handbook contains a wealth of information on Brahms and the background of the German Requiem. The survey of its performance history is particularly enlightening. I have had the pleasure of conducting the entire work several times and analyzed it in college but this small work contains much valuable information that I had not encountered previously. Highly recommended for conductors, singers or listeners who want to understand Brahms' masterpiece better.

The details about the structure of the music score of the German Requiem is well-done in this book, the researches with letters and testimonies are very interesting to understand better the music and the composer Brahms. There is an analysis of tempi, performed by conductors, and written in this book, which are very important. But I was expecting even more testimonies (musicians, conductors, friends, family from the Brahms's century) about how to perform the German Requiem better, because tempi, for example, are so different according to conductors and the musicality is also so different that the feelings and great emotions are too exaggerated or not enough in some recordings, also too heavy because of slow tempi and we may lose the atmosphere wanted by Brahms (flexibility of long phrases, subtleties of harmonies written we have to conduct, personalities of voices who have to sound magnificent and not closed because of musical articulations, music which has to breathe and not stiffed in a tempo with the excuse of a legato, dynamics which can look like some musical labels...), indeed perhaps not enough understood. I think a lot of informations are still missing us to unveil the power of this magnificent German Requiem, more Human Requiem as better subtitled, so with more works and researches to deepen! This book is a minimum required to respect this Requiem composed with a lot of truth, sincerety, deep emotion from the composer. His Requiem is a great lesson of humanity. We must not forget it! And I think it is very important to look and read other music scores of Brahms, in order to remember Brahms's feelings (most complete profile) through his complete music!