Sir Bryn Terfel opens the MSO Spring Gala with a selection of spiritual works to set the scene for the transcendant choral work to come.

Then, the Brahms Festival culminates with one of the most moving tributes to grief and remembrance, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem.

Brahms called it Ein Deutsches Requiem to distinguish it from the Latin kind, to lift it from the merely religious, making of it something humanist and secular. A German requiem was not specifically for the German people; Brahms’ wanted it to speak to all humanity. A transcendent choral work, with gloriously tender parts for baritone and soprano, it is a work that speaks to the best of us.

Brahms began composing Ein Deutsches Requiem in early 1865, only a month or so after the death of his mother. The profound sense of loss and overwhelming grief of that time is unmistakably threaded throughout the music. But there’s also a wondrous feeling of gratitude. Where most requiems focus on the dead, Brahms’ begins with the living. The first words sung are “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted”.