In October 2022, the Monteverdi Choir and John Eliot Gardiner join the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra to perform a programme of choral works by Brahms, alongside the composer’s third symphony.
Programme:
Johannes Brahms
Nänie
Ich schwing mein Horn ins Jammertal
Es tönt ein voller Harfenklang
Nachtwache 1
Einförmig ist der Liebe Gram
Gesang der Parzen
Interval
Symphony No. 3
The Monteverdi Choir joins the Concertgebouw Orchestra to perform six choral works by Johannes Brahms juxtaposed with his third symphony.
Brahms conducted his first choir when he was fourteen - a local all male ensemble which performed works by the young conductor. Brahms later founded his own women’s choir, thereby gaining invaluable experience as a conductor and composer. He chose rigorous Renaissance and Baroque composers as his models, yet dressed this tradition in an unmistakably Romantic guise.
John Eliot Gardiner, conducting the Monteverdi Choir alongside the Concertgebouw Orchestra, will illuminate Brahms’s learning trajectory, which is also echoed in the third symphony. It opens with a memorable phrase: F–A-flat–F, which is a reference to Brahms’s own bachelor motto ‘frei aber froh’, or free yet happy. That freedom has a slight hint of melancholy to it, too, as can be heard most clearly in the poignant second movement.
