In Paradise by Various, pen 12 rgp 2022, Nuo (2022/2022), St. Michael's Church, Hamburg, Germany

It is striking that when selecting poetry for his choral works, Johannes Brahms often sought texts dealing with human loneliness and dependence on the forces of fate. This is how Friedrich Hölderlin describes the endless suffering of human beings in the poem of the same name on the »Schicksalslied«. The "Alto Rhapsody", the text of which was taken from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Harz Journey in Winter", was composed by Brahms, full of lovesickness, when Clara Schumann's daughter married someone else. »Nänie« has a similarly sad background: Friedrich Schiller wrote the text as a reaction to the death of a friend and laments that everything must pass. Brahms' music, on the other hand, sounds anything but bitter and sad.