Brahms: Requiem in concert at Versailles (Chapelle Royale)December 8, 2024. All the practical information (prices, tickets, seating chart) for this concert can be found on this page. Reserve your tickets now to attend this concert in Versailles!
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) German Requiem (1868)
Sabine Devieilhe Soprano Stéphane Degout Baryton
Pygmalion Choir and orchestra Raphaël Pichon Direction
Sunday December 8, 2024, 4 p.m. Chapelle Royale
Text 21-22 – a German requiem (Pichon already)
The German Requiem (Deutsches Requiem) was composed by Brahms over two decades, before its premiere at Bremen Cathedral in 1868. Thirty-five years old, in full creative force, Brahms gives a work which perfectly masters the great masses of sound of the orchestra and the choir, for a masterpiece which surpasses all comparable productions, and dominates the Brahmsian work. The colossal Funeral March which is the heart of the work (Denn alles Fleisch) has the strength of Wagnerian choral pieces, but imbued with an inner pain, resulting from the trials of the composer’s life during the genesis of this Requiem. In truth, far from being a requiem mass, it is here a Trauermusik, a vast funeral music with romantic enthusiasm, which takes as a model the ancient works of Schütz and Bach, and their intense Lutheran faith, to finally arrive to an entirely new composition in the German language, which achieved immense success in Germanic countries. Created at the same time as Wagner’s The Mastersingers, it is undoubtedly also emblematic of the German soul: its immense central fugue forges a crazy ascent to the summits, before an apocalyptic vision, and the final paradise.
Raphaël Pichon approaches this monument of sacred music with the strengths of his Pygmalion ensemble, experienced in the immense perspectives of Bach’s passions: a path towards eternity.
Presented by Château de Versailles Spectacles (3-1054036)
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