Brahms choice of Harmonic

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32562, 23 March 1971, Page 11

Brahms choice of Harmonic

Three Brahms works are to be presented by the choir of the Christchurch Harmonic Society in its first subscription concert for 1971, on Saturday, April 3, in the Civic Theatre. They are the "Song of Destiny,” the "Alto Rhapsody” and “A German Requiem.” Anthea Moller will be the soloist in the "Alto Rhapsody” and Ruth Hawkey and Bruce Carson the soloists in “A German Requiem.” The conductor will be William Hawltav The “Song of Destiny” was composed in 1871 and was first performed in December of that year. It is a work for orchestra and chorus, and is the most popular of Brahms’s works in the smaller forms. Brahms's Rhapsody for Contralto, Mala Chorus and Orchestra, or, as it is more

usually known, the "Alto Rhapsody,” was composed in 1869 and had its first performance 100 years ago this month. It is a setting of three stanzas of Goethe’s “Herzreise im Winter,” a poem describing the melancholy induced in a young man by a reading of the “Sorrow of Werther.” Exactly when Brahms started to think of writing a Requiem is not clear, but what finally spurred his hand was the death of his mother m 1865. The next year the first three movements were performed in Vienna without much success. Two years later three more had been added, and the work was completed by the addition of the lovely movement for soprano solo. “A German Requiem” is not a liturgical requiem for the dead, nor a dramatisation of the traditional act of intercession on behalf of the soul of the departed. It is a benediction of consolation and a statement of faith.