Brahms: Orchestral & Vocal Works from IBS Classical features Mezzo Soprano Agnieszka Rehlis with the Orquesta y Coro Comunidad de Madrid conducted by Marzena Diakun. It is exclusively available in Stereo DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128 and DSD 64 at NativeDSD.

On 2nd April in 1897, Brahms, on his deathbed, asked his doctor to bring him a glass of good Rhine wine. He drank it with pleasure, “Ja, das ist schön” Ahh, that’s beautiful… were his last words. But did he mean beautiful or did he mean delicious? Do we talk about the beauty of wine or the quality of its taste? Was Brahms enjoying the taste of sun-warmed grapes or was he contemplating life? Or in fact, music? In his own music, perhaps, which brilliantly combines both beauty and excellence.

The excellence of Brahms’ work was summed up by Joseph Joachim, the celebrated Hungarian violinist, composer and conductor who worked with Brahms, and who described his music as “pure as a diamond, soft as the snow”. Schumann also praised the serenity and optimism of the tone with which Brahms ended his most somber and tormented pieces: “Over choppy waves finally a rainbow shimmers, as the nightingale’s song accompanies the capricious flight of the butterfly”.

Brahms was enchanted by the music of female voices, and in 1859 he founded a choir for women in Hamburg, which attained excellence, and for which he composed Four Songs, Op. 17 with accompaniment for two horns and harp from three poems by Tuperti, Shakespeare and Eichendorff, and the fourth based on a page from Ossian’s Fingal. The composition, with its balance of joyful (1 and 3) and somber melodies, met with great success. To listen to Brahms’ songs as he conducted, from high in the branches of a tree at the summer concerts in the gardens outside Hamburg, would surely be an unforgettable experience.

Orquesta y Coro Comunidad de Madrid
Marzena Diakun – Conductor
Josep Vila I Casanas – Choir Master
Agnieszka Rehlis – Mezzo-Soprano