Mendelssohn: Mitten wir im Leben sind Op. 23 No. 3

“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

“Singing of an exceptionally high quality.” Gramophone Magazine

“Outgoing, excitingly resonant, spirited singing” Gramophone Magazine