“I spend all my money on books”, wrote Johannes Brahms at the age of 20; “Since boyhood I have read anything I could get my hands on and, without any guidance, I found my way from the worst towards the best”. Whilst his choice of poetry for his ‘Lieder’ range from the sentimental to the exquisite, the texts of his choral works are of an almost consistently high literary standard, and the music resounds throughout with the composer’s loving devotion to the words therein. He described the Marienlieder of 1859 as being “in the style of old German church music and folk song” Unlike the Marienlieder, most of Brahms’s choral works with orchestra take their texts either from the Bible or from the great German poets of the high Romantic era. Of the works, presented on this album, the Alto Rhapsody is surely the most autobiographical.

The Rhapsody is a setting of three stanzas from Goethe’s poem ‘Harzreise im Winter’.

Combined with the Schicksalslied and Nänie, this makes an excellent display of Brahms choral works.