Friday, April 8, 8.00pm
Sunday, April 10, 3.00pm
Symphony Hall

BRAHMS A German Requiem
BRAHMS Variations on a theme by Haydn
HAYDN (attrib.) Divertimento for Winds

Grant Llewellyn, conductor
Elizabeth Futral, soprano
Philip Cutlip, baritone

CLICK HERE to listen to Music Director Grant Llewellyn discuss this program.

When Brahms published his “German Requiem,” he commented “I’d rather leave out the word ‘German’ and refer to ‘humanity’ instead.” Unlike most requiems, this masterwork is not about the terrors and splendors which may await us after death. Instead, it is a very human meditation on loss and consolation. Brahms wrote his Requiem at the age of thirty-six, completing much of it in the two months after his own mother’s death. Its first complete performance, under Brahms’ direction, was his first great public triumph.

Four years later, Brahms had found a secure position as the director of the Gesellschaft für Musikfreunde, the Viennese equivalent of the Handel and Haydn Society. Always interested in early music, Brahms had run across a divertimento for winds by Haydn. Brahms liked the theme of the second movement, based on a chorale for St. Anthony’s Day. He created a set of variations on this tune, first as a two-piano version which he tried out with Clara Schumann. When this proved successful, Brahms created a fully-orchestrated version; the Variations on a Theme by Haydn became one of his first great orchestral successes.

For further information:

http://www.johannesbrahms.org/
An excellent source for Brahms information on the web

http://www.barbwired.com/barbweb/programs/brahms_variations.html
Notes on the Variations on a Theme by Haydn