Symphonie numéro 4, Alt-Rhapsodie, Schicksalslied

Description

"The four symphonies of Brahms are at the heart of our musical heritage, just like Monteverdi's Vespers, Bach's Cello Suites, or Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. On the occasion of the twenty-five years of the Orchestre des Champs Elysées and the half-century (!) of the Collegium Vocale of Ghent, we conceived the project to record them alongside major choral works by a composer whose instrumental and vocal worlds are essentially inextricable. Johannes Brahms was above all a singer at heart. His entire work is underpinned by poetry and text, even rhetoric, in the organic continuation of ancient music, particularly that of Schütz and Bach, which he knew thoroughly and sought to continue, much to the chagrin of the modernists of his time. In the twentieth century, the orchestral world and that of the voice often took different paths. On the contrary, the trajectory of the Orchestre des Champs Elysées and that of the Collegium Vocale have been intimately linked. First of all, this musical complementarity has allowed for the production and recording of many masterpieces of the repertoire in a deep common aesthetic. But, above all, through diligent collaboration, the choir of the Collegium Vocale has strived to integrate into its approach a vertical precision, rhythmic accuracy, and a precise untempered intonation, among the virtues to which the orchestra aspires, while the predominance of text, phrasing, articulation, and even pronunciation have profoundly marked the orchestra's discourse, down to the core of its instrumental technique. These are the foundations of a work that we dream of continuing in the half-century to come." Philippe Herreweghe