As a young man Johannes Brahms served as a choral conductor at Detmold, a position which compelled him to seek vocal works from masters as far back as Rovetta, Praetorius, Handel, Schutz, Gabrieli, and Bach. Along with his consuming interest in folk melodies of various lands, these influences cross-pollinated Brahms’s own settings for various ensembles he directed. This reissue (rec. 1990) provides a rich series of tapestries and instrumental mixtures for multifarious choir groups, with Robert Levin and John Perry at a fortepiano from Josef Riedl, 1860 – all inscribed at St. Giles, Crippllegate, London.
We open with the first set of Love-Song Waltzes (1869), based on poems by Georg Daumer from a collection called “Polydora.” Eminently Viennese, these eighteen whimsical pieces lightly dance and sway on the surface of love, reflecting the middle class preoccupation with music made in the domestic gatherings around the piano-duet. The Op. 17 (1860) set of four songs for women’s chorus captures a more romantic ethos, clearly indebted to Schubert and Schumann’s use of the French horn, here coupled to a harp in the first song, Harp Notes Ring Forth. After a song by Shakespeare, the Eichendorff lyric embraces Nature, but its last sentiment is of the grave. The northern fictitious poet Ossian provides the Fingal lyric, a heraldic ethos later embraced by Yeats. Some of the harmonies easily evoke the Horn Trio, Op. 40.
The Op. 42 (1860) set of three songs employs a more polyphonic vocal texture, subdividing altos and basses, along with the complement of sopranos and tenors. This set, too, concludes with an extended Ossian setting, A Dirge for Dar-Thula, as translated into German by Herder. The a cappella bass parts definitely ring of Palestrina. The piano returns to accompany the Op. 92 (1877) Quartette, whose themes are night, autumn, sorrow, the grave, and blissful transport. Delicate and warm, the transparent textures often utilize the Brahms harmonic device of a descending third. A set of five songs, Op. 104 (1888) concludes the disc; of these, the first two poems are by Rueckert. The third of these songs, Last Happiness, has words by Max Kalbeck, one of Brahms’s early biographers. Literally autumnal thoughts dominate these poems, so can Mahler be far behind? It’s music for the reflective connoisseur.
— Gary Lemco
