New Versions of Brahms’ ‘Ein deutsches Requiem’

Is there really a buying public large enough to justify the existence of 20-some CD editions of Brahms’ “Ein deutsches Requiem” (1968), a low-key, consolatory reflection on death?

Are those sharp A&R; minds at the record companies onto something? You can never get sales figures from the majors, so the mind is left to run riot, if such an active metaphor is apt in the presence of such seemingly passive music.

Are we to assume that the “German Requiem”--after the language in which its Old Testament-derived text is sung--is in the great “sorrowing” tradition of the Third Symphony of today’s best-selling master of musical passivity, Henryk Gorecki, to confuse the chronology somewhat? Just asking.

Under any circumstances, the Requiem is a sublimely beautiful score, 70-plus minutes in length, that has proven endlessly fascinating to conductors, perhaps because of the challenge of its down-tempo subtleties.

The Requiem has been employed, to its detriment and its interpreters’, for Romantic indulgence. And lately it has been subjected, with no noticeable damage done, to “historically informed” reinterpretation by John Eliot Gardiner and Roger Norrington.

No fewer than four additional CD editions, employing modern instruments and performing styles, have appeared in the past two months, swelling the currently available recorded total to 26.

One newcomer (Deutsche Grammophon 437517), in which Claudio Abbado conducts his unimpeachable Berlin Philharmonic, has little on its mind beyond dignified efficiency.

Technical fluency abounds. The choruses, from Sweden, do their exacting job with optimum clarity and balance. The soloists are a pair of today’s most sought-after singers, both in prime vocal form: soprano Cheryl Studer and baritone Andreas Schmidt.

But there is a deadening lack of precisely that quality that some other conductors are seeking during the present-day re-examination of this challenging score: the dramatic contrast beneath the low-key surface. Here, there is so little variance in expression, orchestral as well as choral, from one section to another, that there might as well be no text at all.

Daniel Barenboim, conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a thick-toned CSO Chorus, seems to be after something deeper and darker, perhaps a certain Germanic “majesty.” It is, however, so exaggeratedly pursued that the most consolatory passages, say the graceful chorus “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen” and the soprano’s ethereal “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit,” are buried by sluggish pacing and a lack of rhythmic lift.

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By contrast, consider the darkly affecting performance that has Colin Davis conducting the Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of the Bavarian Radio (RCA Victor 60868), less glossy but decidedly more engaged forces than the aforementioned.

Davis’ overall timing is about the same as Abbado’s, a bit faster than Barenboim’s. But Davis imparts life to this music about death. His reading has backbone and momentum, making one aware of a gradually unfolding human drama rather than, as with Barenboim, slowly expiring notes on paper.

In contrast to Barenboim’s bland Janet Williams and uncharacteristically subdued Thomas Hampson, Davis’ Angela Maria Blasi and Bryn Terfel are integrated, communicative participants in the drama who also happen to sing well.

The late Rudolf Kempe, who enjoyed demystifying the conductor’s craft, once claimed that his function was to set the orchestra in motion, remind the musicians along the way of where they were and make sure that everyone finished together.

But there is ever so much more to be heard in the handsome sounding reissue (EMI 64705, mid-price) of Kempe’s 1956 monophonic recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Choir of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral and two celebrated soloists, Elisabeth Grummer and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Kempe’s timings are as slow as Barenboim’s, but Kempe shapes the score with such a wealth of expressive nuance, without neglecting to maintain an underlying rhythmic pulse, that this impresses as one of the most vital--and emotional--performances of this grand work ever made available for home listening.