The Hallé - Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem

Clemens Schuldt conductor
Siobhan Stagg soprano
Markus Butter baritone
Hallé Choir
Matthew Hamilton choral director

Strauss Metamorphosen
Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem

The combination of two requiems, one secular, one sacred, creates this fascinating programme, conducted by the ‘dynamic presence’ (The Times) of returning guest, Clemens Schuldt. Richard Strauss’s elegiac Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings was his response to the destruction of German culture that he witnessed in the final years of World War Two, its opera houses and concerts halls all in ruins. It was the death of Brahms’s champion, Schumann, and his mother’s passing that spurred Ein deustches Requiem, setting a text he compiled from the German Lutheran Bible. To perform what’s arguably Brahms’s most touching and powerful large-scale work are Hallé newcomers with busy international careers: Australian Siobhan Stagg, ‘A gleaming soloist’ (The Guardian); and Austrian Markus Butter, whose UK performances have included singing with the Royal Opera and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Thursday Series sponsor: Siemens