Dinis Sousa conducts the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem

Monteverdi Choir

The Monteverdi Choir comes to Amsterdam to perform together with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Brahms' 'requiem for humanity', Ein deutsches Requiem, led by its associate conductor Dinis Sousa. With this large-scale but modest work, Brahms created a Protestant German-language version of the requiem mass. Not for the dead, but as comfort for the relatives.

A German Requiem

In the Brahms cycle, which started in 2021, the Concertgebouw Orchestra links the symphonies to Brahms' choral works and solo concertos. Everything comes together in Ein deutsches Requiem for choir, orchestra and soloists. The influence of the old polyphonic masters can clearly be heard in Brahms' oeuvre. He especially admired Heinrich Schütz, the most important Lutheran-Protestant composer before Johann Sebastian Bach. Choral works by both Schütz and Johann Christoph Bach (the Great, a distant relative of Johann Sebastian) are performed that in their text and text treatment point ahead to Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem .