Brahms Sacred Choral Music

This disc gathers all of Brahms' sacred choral music for unaccompanied mixed voices, except for the Sieben Marienlieder of 1859. Taken together with the accompanied sacred choral pieces, including the monumental German Requiem, this amounts to a significant body of work for a composer of his era who was not religious. Brahms was a skilled choral composer and it's a shame that his smaller a cappella works aren't performed more frequently. Except for Zwei Motetten from 1864, all these works come from the last two decades of his life.

This fabulous recording featuring Matthew Best and the Corydon Singers was first released in 1989 at a time when they were recording the standard repertoire for small choirs for Hyperion, and this disc of Brahms' motets and shorter sacred choral pieces was, and is, one of their finest. From the smooth and lovely Ave Maria for women's choir and organ through their hard and harsh "Warum is das Licht gegeben?" to their craggy yet consoling "Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein," Best and his choir deliver technically impeccable and deeply moving performances. The Corydon Singers tend toward a big, lush, and slightly fruity sound, as is common with English choirs. But one cannot fault their diction, articulation, pronunciation or their tone, blend, and balance. Best's interpretations are soulful but not sentimental and expressive but not excessive. Recorded in full-bodied digital sound, these performances will likely please fans of Brahms' sacred choral music.

The genre accompanied him for almost his entire creative career: the sacred choral song op. 30 was written by the 23-year-old Johannes Brahms in 1856, the Fünf Gesänge for mixed choir a cappella are his late legacy in the field of secular choral song, composed between 1886 and 1888. In between lie the Drei Gesänge, composed at a time when Brahms was also very practically involved with choral singing as a choirmaster, then the Sieben Lieder for four to eight-part choir and finally his large-scale Mottete op. 74, No. 1 Warum ist das Licht gegeben from 1877 and the sister work O Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf op. 74 No. 2. Over the course of more than 30 years, the composer showed a fascinating development which – of course always in the most demanding style – led from the romantic opulence of the six- to eight-part movement to more reduced austerity. Chorwerk Ruhr traces this development with fascinating intensity.

Brahms composed choral music prolifically throughout his life. As the heir to Bach and the German Protestant tradition, he based most of his motets on texts from Luther’s translation of the Bible – yet succeeded in infusing them with Romanticism at its most soulful.

Peter Cornelius was born to actor parents and destined from early life to have a career centred on words and music. He had early contact with the stage and dramatic literature, and like others of the time (such as Schumann), Cornelius immersed himself in German literature at an early age. At the same time he developed an interest in music. After early influences from Beethoven and Schubert, and studies of form and the composition of sacred music in Berlin, Cornelius's musical style matured under the tutelage of Liszt in Weimar.