About

Performers:

• Ashley Riches, bass-baritone
• Katherine Gregory, soprano
• St Michael & All Angels Choir
• Barnes Festival Orchestra

Brahms’ German Requiem, composed between 1865 and 1868 following the death of his mother, is a work of profound consolation, offering hope and reflection through its soaring choral and orchestral writing. Brahms’s colleague Schumann believed Brahms would deliver ‘wonderful glimpses of the spirit world’. It is a piece that carries the gift of spiritual comfort rather than the threat of impending judgment – a glowing message of brotherhood and consolation, a work of its time and place but with universal resonance

Performed by the Choir of St Michael and All Angels, under Director of Music Owen Elsley, the work unfolds in movements of tenderness, grandeur and serene assurance. Soloists Ashley Riches and Katherine Gregory bring Brahms’s consoling text to life, creating an evening of music that resonates as powerfully today as at its premiere.