Brahms: Dem dunklen Schoss der heilgen Erde, WoO 20

This charming disc presents a comprehensive selection of Brahms’s secular choral music. Through his professional activities, Brahms had a continuous interest in producing music for choirs, as well as profound insight into their capabilities. His impressive output of a cappella sacred choruses and motets makes learned and creative reference to such Baroque masters as Gabrieli, Schütz and Bach. Yet Brahms was equally adept in the traditions of the unaccompanied Romantic choral song, the Chorlied, following the lead of Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann, and adapting the form to his own characteristic ends. He also wrote a large number of vocal duets and quartets with piano accompaniment, including the popular Zigeunerlieder, which are testimony to his extraordinary fascination for gypsy music and its fertilizing effect on his style.

Selections from these secular forms are performed by the professional chamber choir Consortium, conducted by Andrew-John Smith, who will be familiar to Hyperion listeners from his acclaimed recording of Saint-Säens’ organ works.

6 CD + CD ROM

Brahms conducted amateur choirs throughout his professional life, both as a useful source of income and because he enjoyed his contact with enthusiastic, amateur music-makers, not least the ladies in his various choirs. It also gave him a chance to explore music of former eras, by Bach, Schütz, Buxtehude and more, which Brahms considered a vital part of his musical heritage and which, practically speaking, he was bringing back to life in a culture that barely knew its own history.

We may with some justice speak of Brahms the periodinstrument pioneer. These splendid modern performances come from a choir of a similar size to the one Brahms would have recognised, and are directed by the experienced choral trainer Nicol Matt.