Brahms - An English Requiem

The Guardian 60

Mary Bevan (soprano), Marcus Farnsworth (baritone), James Baillieu & Richard Uttley (piano), Choir of King’s College London/Fort
(Delphian)

Brahms chose the text of his great German Requiem consciously in the vernacular of his country, so those who first introduced it to London decided to pay homage to his ideals and perform it in English, with Brahms’s own piano (four hands) accompaniment. This recording uses similar forces to those who gathered in a fashionable Wimpole Street drawing room in 1871, but revises the piano part to more closely reflect the textures of Brahms’s orchestration. This produces an intimate, highly charged chamber performance, brightly, but sometimes too lightly, sung by this young choir, with exemplary enunciation. Alas, clouded diction spoils an otherwise divine solo from Mary Bevan.