Trost und Hoffnung Berlin Concert

“Tearful will be that day, when from the ashes shall rise, the guilty man to be judged.” These are the words of the traditional text of the requiem, the funeral mass. Innumerable composers have set this notion of a dramatic purgatory word for word. Since the 19th century, however, a broadening of the term requiem is to be noted. Brahms, Reger, Hindemith and others composed requiem works that were no longer intended for liturgical puposes, and that treat the selection of text more freely. To conclude the Musikfest Berlin, the RIAS Kammerchor will present two very different 20th-century versions of the requiem.

The French composer Maurice Duruflé composed a version in 1947 that in its wonderful musical colours offers solace and hope above all. As a logical consequence, Duruflé refrained from setting the complete text of the “day of wrath and doom impending” sequence to music, concluding the work instead with a hopeful prayer: “May angels lead you into paradise.” In his musical realisation, the prayer comes across as otherworldly. Duruflé used Gregorian melodies as the basis of his composition; these he combined with impressionistically inspired harmonies, ensuring in this way a deeply moving event in sound. Alfred Schnittke encountered completely different preconditions during the Cold War in Moscow. It was inconceivable to make use of a Catholic requiem for worship service. Schnittke thus situated his work, with which he intended to commemorate his late mother, into the framework of stage music for Schiller’s drama Don Carlos in 1975. In doing so, though he did use the traditional requiem text, he shortened it, changed the order, and added an abbreviated Credo. Schnittke’s music – composed for soloists, choir and orchestra without strings, but with brass instruments, organ, electric guitar and lots of percussion – is unrelenting and serious, an extremely authentic testimony to when and where it was composed.

7:10 p.m. Pre-concert talk | approx. 10:00 p.m. Post-concert discussion | The concert will be recorded by Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

In cooperation with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO) and Musikfest Berlin / Berliner Festspiele.