ULSTER ORCHESTRA 2017/8 SEASON: BRAHMS REQUIEM AT EASTER

Schubert Symphony No.8 Unfinished

Brahms A German Requiem

Jonathan Darlington CONDUCTOR

Elin Pritchard SOPRANO

Gareth Brynmor John BARITONE

Belfast Philharmonic Choir

Stephen Doughty CHORUSMASTER

Schubert’s Unfinished is a masterful piece of writing, the two movements so perfectly balanced it’s difficult to imagine how he could have created two more. The first movement is tragic, the second balances some of the most tender music Schubert ever wrote with angry, jagged outbursts. It’s a piece that is wracked with emotional turmoil, so it’s fitting that the second half of this concert brings music to spiritually console.

Brahms used not Latin liturgy, but text from the Lutheran Bible for his Requiem and placed the emphasis in this work on comfort for those in mourning. The result is A German Requiem; perhaps the central work in Brahms’s output and a work that is gentle and incredibly human. Written in 1865, it was prompted by Brahms’ own extreme personal loss: his mother had died the very same year he wrote the piece. Let this wonderful concert bring peace and time for reflection amidst the joy of Easter.