Recorded in August 2022 at concerts given in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg under Kent Nagano, this version of Johannes Brahms’s celebrated choral masterpiece will come as a surprise to many. The German Requiem is heard not in its usual seven-movement version, but rather as it was first performed in Bremen Cathedral on 10 April 1868 (Good Friday) under Brahms’s direction, without the fifth movement for soprano and choir that was completed later that year. On the other hand, there are numerous interludes, instrumental and vocal, secular and sacred, by Bach, Tartini, Schumann and Handel – including pieces that were then regarded as essential parts of a Good Friday concert. Such a programme might seem unusual today, but these musical additions shed new light on Brahms’s work, which in this version manifests itself as what Umberto Eco might have described as an ‘open work’.

Presenting the work in the form heard at the Bremen première is more than just a reconstruction: it enriches our understanding of this unique music.