Autumn 2026

Brahms Requiem (2-piano version)

Piano, Ian Riddle and Tim Sagar

This November we are performing Johannes Brahms’s towering achievement Ein deutsches Requiem (two piano version). Thought to have been written as a response to the death of the composer’s mother Christiane (an event which devastated him), this magistral and deeply moving work grapples with the themes of grief, transience and hope. Although people of faith can understand Ein deutsches Requiem in conventional religious terms, it is a multi-layered work that admits of non-religious and humanistic interpretations. Brahms himself was famously agnostic (or even atheist) and strenuously rejected representations that the Requiem should include more orthodox references to the redemptive work of Christ – the theme is conspicuously absent from lyrics drawn from Luther’s Bible translation. Indeed, some have claimed that it was in fact music and art that constituted religious faith for Brahms. So what we hear is a profound meditation on loss and the promise of salvation and repose – however you wish to understand those things. Brahms takes us on a journey from the depths of despair and mourning towards the light of purpose and hope in human existence. Ein deutsches Requiem is by turns despairing, desolate, tragic, tender, loving, confident and triumphant; and yet, like the works of Beethoven, it embodies throughout an unshakeable faith in human dignity and significance. Who can resist, for example, the dance-like and tender Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (How lovely are thy dwelling places) and the upwelling joy and optimism that surges through bar after bar of the breathtaking fugue Der Gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand (But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God). Join us and be transported by Brahms’s musical celebration of the depths and heights of human existence, whatever your religious beliefs: Ein deutsches Requiem has moving and important things to say about what are, when all’s said and done, central issues of our human condition.

NB. Ticket price includes an interval drink.