Brahms: Schicksalslied, Op. 54 (Song of Destiny)

“The large Warsaw Philharmonic Choir has a welcome solidity, unanimity and warmth of tone...Wit's tempos tend to be on the brisk side - especially in the Gesang der Parzen, a performance that illuminates that piece's Baroque roots but somewhat mislays its underlying sense of tragic mystery...the field is crowded these days, but this new Naxos offering will be competitive at its budget price.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2012 ****

“Ewa Wolak is a rich-toned contralto, without a hint of a wobble, who can evoke exactly the kind of lyrical drama which the lovely Alto Rhapsody commands...The choral singing is radiant in its glowing simplicity...this super-budget collection is marvellously sung and played.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2012

“You might not like Wit's approach if you like your Brahms volatile. His conducting is wonderfully judged, if slow, allowing the music to unfold with a measured eloquence that often generates a sense of gathering implacability...It's the Warsaw Philharmonic Choir's contribution, superbly controlled and articulate, that is so sensational here, however. Their performance of Nänie, in particular, is among the most beautiful on disc” The Guardian, 9th February 2012 ****

“The performances are lean, light and powerful. The general approach is on the slower side, which sometimes makes the music static. The Alto Rhapsody is unhurried, even restrained - one of those readings that conquer you not by concentrated stress, but by beauty. The solo alto singing is almost operatic; Ewa Wolak’s voice is strong and even, without annoying vibrato...The chorus has a beautiful sound, very good diction, and is well balanced.” MusicWeb International, August 2012

“Ticciati's performances are wonderfully alive and dramatically sensitive...while the Bamberg orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Choir have this music in their bones.” The Guardian, 25th February 2010 ****

“the Middle European Bamberg sound and the Munich-based choristers sound absolutely at home in this repertoire — there is an old-world Brahmsian glow to the singing and playing... Anyone who wants these works on one disc won’t be disappointed.” Sunday Times, 28th February 2010 ****

“[Ticciati's] ear for style, detail and musical shape is judicious and his mode of expression sound.This is mellow Brahms...The Bavarian forces perform the music with a soft, radiant glow.” The Telegraph, 12th March 2010 ****

“...these are sterling accounts, with just the right mix of tenderness and sorrow in Nänie and a real tragic forward motion to the central section of the Schicksaslied...aided by the passionately committed singing of the choir. In the Alto Rhapsody Alice Coote is an eloquent and thoughtful soloist” BBC Music Magazine, June 2010 ****

“These are animated, purposeful performances...The movement is free, quite unclogged; the texture is clear, no thickening substance adhering.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2010

“Some of the orchestral tempi and texture will startle those who prefer more luxuriant accounts, but the reedy woodwinds and edgy string sound give extra momentum to this reading, which - as always with Eliot Gardiner - is steeped in scholarly preparation.” Stephen Pritchard, The Observer, 14th September 2008

“These are intensely dramatic performances, powerful and unmanicured. The gathering drama of the three choral pieces is channelled and unleashed in a towering account of the First Symphony's opening movement.” Gramophone Magazine, October 2008

“Recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall, this first instalment in a complete Brahms cycle may not offer the technically immaculate playing of some rivals but outstrips most of them in its immediacy. Enhanced by equally powerful accounts of the rarely heard Begräbnisgesang and the Schicksalslied, this is one of the most stimulating Brahms releases to have appeared in recent years.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2008 *****

“Gardiner's period-instrument textures and no-nonsense tempos buoy up music that can too easily get bogged down...A good start to what promises to be a fascinating series.” The Guardian, 3rd October 2008 ****

“The singing of the Monteverdians is luminous” Sunday Times

“...[D]ynamic, astringent: admirably transparent in its textures and super-sweet in Peter Hanson's violin solo at the close of the "Andante sostenuto” The Independent on Sunday

“Part of a project whose purpose is to contextualise Brahms's four symphonies and GermanRequiem, this is a record that needs to be heard chronologically and complete, not cherrypicked for individual items.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner's project promises to bring into play the work of Schütz, Palestrina, Brahms Orchestral 247 and Bach, along with choral pieces by admired contemporaries. Here Felix Mendelssohn is the representative 'other', his superb Mitten wir, composed three years before Brahms's birth. It is flanked by Brahms's Begräbnisgesang (1858), a threnody for chorus, winds and timpani that openly anticipates the second movement of the German Requiem, and the sublime yet troubled Hölderlin-inspired Schicksalslied ('Song of Destiny', 1868-71) which can be seen as a pendant to the Requiem.
Brahms's setting of Hölderlin's poem was controversial.
Where Hölderlin supplants his opening vision of celestial quiet with images of the hell of earthly existence, Brahms ends by revisiting that celestial vision in a ruefully beautiful orchestral coda in C major. Schicksalslied tells us a good deal about the First Symphony. In Gardiner's powerful juxtaposition, the descent from that rueful C major coda to the C minor of the symphony's tumultuous opening is a true coup dethéâtre, the terrible enactment of another Fall.
These are intensely dramatic performances, powerful and unmanicured. The gathering drama of the three choral pieces is channelled and unleashed in a towering account of the First Symphony's opening movement. When Klemperer conducted the symphony in Los Angeles in 1941 a player recalled: “He drove, as in a huge chariot, to the highest planes of expression.” There is something of that spirit here in Gardiner's gaunt, no-holds-barred account of the work.
The use of period instruments and their deployment in the brooding acoustic of Paris's Salle Wagram are clearly factors in the performance's wider impact. It has to be said that the playing in the symphony's middle movements is rather rough and ready. In the third movement, which under Gardiner is neither allegretto nor grazioso, Sir Charles Mackerras's historically informed Scottish Chamber Orchestra version (Teldec) is much to be preferred. Not that comparisons matter. This is a mighty Brahms First which, like the programme it inhabits, is a thing sufficient unto itself.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“a light, raw-edged performance” Classic FM Magazine, Aril 2011

‘…an opportunity to be with Brahms for nearly an hour in which the thoughtful, questioning mood is unbroken and its musical expression unblemished.’ Gramophone

“Philippe Herreweghe's survey of Brahms' works for choir and orchestra is flooded with light...The silky portamenti of the strings is a testament to the refinement of the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées.” The Independent, 5th February 2012

“To hear this music performed with the cool precision and shining transparency of Philippe Herreweghe's forces sends shivers down the spine.” The Observer, 12th February 2012

“the Dutch conductor reveals that same understanding of, and interpretative sympathy for, Brahms’s music that he brought to his Harmonia Mundi recording of A German Requiem...Hallenberg brings a rapt, mellow, consolatory warmth to the Alto Rhapsody, and Herreweghe taps the Song of Destiny for its potent, spiritual essence.” The Telegraph, 24th February 2012 *****

“This is one of the most impressive collections of Brahms's shorter chorus-and-orchestra works that's come my way for some time. It's partly because of the particular combination of works...But it's also the luminous transparency of the performances themselves that's remarkable...All in all, on many levels, a deeply satisfying recording.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2012 *****

“serene, handsomely blended performances.” Financial Times, 31st March 2012 ***

“a superbly rich and eloquent example of Brahms's art at its most sublime...Herreweghe allows the music to evolve with a wonderful feeling of spaciousness in which Brahms's often intense musical textures are beautifully revealed...a performance which stands head and shoulders above much of the competition. It is very much the icing on a mouth-wateringly sumptuous cake of a disc.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2012

“An extremely enjoyable and very useful anthology...[The Schicksalslied] is given a performance that is an ideal combination of drama and transparency; the orchestral epilogue that closes the work is really lovely. Herreweghe's orchestra is responsive to every detail of Brahms's markings...Hallenberg, with her rich tone and fine sense of line and phrasing, has a way of chaping the text that compels attention.” International Record Review, May 2012