Conductor Kent Nagano’s decision to interleave movements of Brahms’ German Requiem with movements of Rihm’s Das Lesen der Schrift (which, in fact, was commissioned for that purpose) has, unsurprisingly, kicked up some controversy. I didn’t attend that concert, but the comments have piqued enough of my curiosity that I now wish I had. As it is, I’ll just collect opinions on it for future perusal.
The CSO musicians themselves were mostly not happy with what was the ultimate shit sandwich.
Marc Geelhoed attended a performance and judges it to be an aesthetic failure.
A. C . Douglas calls it a “philistine act of vandalism”.
Marc van Bree points out that the CSO programme notes (written by Philip Huscher) claim that at the Bremen premiere of the German Requiem, “Brahms himself inserted selections by J.S. Bach, Giuseppe Tartini, and Robert Schumann between the fourth and fifth movements”. A. C. Douglas retorts that Huscher fabricated that to “justify an outrage”, since the fifth moment hadn’t been written at that point (which a little Googling shows to be true). However, perhaps Huscher meant that those performances were inserted between the fourth and fifth movements of the Bremen version of the requiem (which would be between the fourth and sixth movements of the final version). I have tried to Google for more information on this, but have come up empty.
May 10, 2007 at 1:28 pm |
Thanks for the link. You go to the U. of C., though. You don’t need Google to find your answers, you have the Reg. I guarantee that you will find what you’re looking for there.
May 10, 2007 at 6:14 pm |
I know, but I was at home and lazy. I also don’t care that much what Brahms did: even if he wouldn’t have liked it, I would accept the modifications if they made aesthetic sense. The composer’s intentions aren’t all that matters.