The excellence of Brahms’ work was summed up by Joseph Joachim, the celebrated Hungarian violinist, composer and conductor who worked with Brahms, and who described his music as “pure as a diamond, soft as the snow”. Schumann also praised the serenity and optimism of the tone with which Brahms ended his most somber and tormented pieces: “Over choppy waves finally a rainbow shimmers, as the nightingale’s song accompanies the capricious flight of the butterfly”.

Brahms was enchanted by the music of female voices, and in 1859 he founded a choir for women in Hamburg, which attained excellence, and for which he composed Four Songs, Op. 17 with accompaniment for two horns and harp from three poems by Tuperti, Shakespeare and Eichendorff, and the fourth based on a page from Ossian’s Fingal. The composition, with its balance of joyful (1 and 3) and somber melodies, met with great success. To listen to Brahms’ songs as he conducted, from high in the branches of a tree at the summer concerts in the gardens outside Hamburg, would surely be an unforgettable experience.

Orquesta y Coro Comunidad de Madrid
Marzena Diakun – Conductor
Josep Vila I Casanas – Choir Master
Agnieszka Rehlis – Mezzo-Soprano