Marcus Creed - Brahms: Sacred Choral Music (1996)

This disc gathers all of Brahms' sacred choral music for unaccompanied mixed voices, except for the Sieben Marienlieder of 1859. Taken together with the accompanied sacred choral pieces, including the monumental German Requiem, this amounts to a significant body of work for a composer of his era who was not religious. Brahms was a skilled choral composer and it's a shame that his smaller a cappella works aren't performed more frequently. Except for Zwei Motetten from 1864, all these works come from the last two decades of his life. The pieces here are similar in character to other sacred works as chronologically separated as the German Requiem of 1869 and the Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ, of 1896, the last compositions he wrote, in their contrapuntal textures, harmonic language, and the use of certain cadential figures that he seemed to reserve primarily for his works with religious themes. Their moods range from the solemnly contemplative to the rhapsodic, and it's intriguing to compare the outgoing, ecstatic Fest- und Gedenksprüche, Op. 109, with the more introspective Drei Motetten, Op. 110, the last works he wrote before his valedictory Chorale Preludes, Op. 111. All the works are immensely attractive and deserve to be better known. Marcus Creed leads the RIAS-Kammerchor in warm, disciplined performances of rich tonal depth that do justice to both the music's Romantic fervor and its contrapuntal clarity. Harmonia Mundi's sound is spacious, but at the same time feels intimate.