Detlev Glanert: new companions for Brahms symphonies
With recent performances of Vexierbild in the USA and Australia, Detlev Glanert has completed his set of companion pieces for the four Brahms symphonies, also including Brahms-Fantasie, Idyllium and Weites Land.
Born in Hamburg, like Brahms, the German composer Detlev Glanert has long been drawn to the Romantic composer’s music, creating scores which comment on, expand upon or orchestrate works by Brahms. Over the past 15 years this enterprise has included a special focus on Brahms’s four symphonies, with Glanert creating four companion orchestral works that have proved popular in programming, providing modern scores that sit comfortably and intriguingly when paired alongside the 19th century symphonic classics.
Brahms-Fantasie (2011-12)
companion for Brahms Symphony No.1 in C minor
This 12-minute orchestral piece is subtitled by Glanert as a ‘heliogravure’ - a nineteenth-century technique in which photographs are painted over with chemicals. The original material thus appears as something transfigured and ‘re-kneaded’, remaining present in its original form while becoming something new through the intervention of an artist. Glanert created his new piece from the opening gestures of Brahms’s first symphony, paraphrasing and developing the material just as the old master himself transformed the beginning through variations and rearrangements. Brahms-Fantasie was premiered in 2012 by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Donald Runnicles and the work has been programmed internationally by conductors including Semyon Bychkov, Stéphane Deneve and Edward Gardner.
> View the Online Score
Idyllium (2018-19)
companion for Brahms Symphony No.2 in D major
Glanert views the second symphony as Brahms’s most cheerful and melodious, and this lighter, idyllic mood is reflected in this 10-minute ‘metamorphoses after Brahms’. The work opens with a number of small, coloured motifs hanging before being strung together, leading to a characteristic waltz and a finale which takes us into Glanert’s own musical world. The work was commissioned by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra as part of Glanert’s extended residency in Amsterdam and premiered under the baton of Pablo Heras-Casado, with further performances in the US and Australia conducted by Donald Runnicles.
Vexierbild (2023)
companion for Brahms Symphony No.3 in F major
The most recent of the companion pieces bears a title meaning Hidden Image, referring to the mystery around the genesis of Brahms’s third symphony, while Glanert’s subtitle ‘contrafactum’ pays tribute to the historic technique of making new music out of old, borrowing from one sphere and applying it to another. Within this 12-minute piece, Glanert is most fascinated with Brahms’s ideas and inner material rather than direct quotation, planting gestures, figures, and structural qualities into his new work. Donald Runnicles premiered Vexierbild at his Grand Teton Music Festival last year, and performed the score with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra this June, coupled with an ambitious educational programme.
Weites Land (2013)
companion for Brahms Symphony No.4 in E minor
Weites Land is established as one of Glanert’s most popular scores, with over 50 performances since its premiere in 2014. The title refers to the ‘open land’ of marshes and wide skies that surround Brahms and Glanert’s birth city of Hamburg, combining a certain melancholy with the adventure of soon reaching the ocean. One reference to Brahms’s fourth symphony in Glanert’s 11-minute score is the motivic working that opens the first movement with its interlocking thirds and sixths, and there is a parallel love of lyrical reminiscence ruffled by defiant-vigorous outbursts. The work has been championed by conductors including Roger Epple, Semyon Bychkov, Olari Elts and Stéphane Deneve.
> Listen to Weites Land on Spotify
> View the Online Score
In addition to the symphonic companions, Glanert has orchestrated Four Chorale Preludes from Brahms’s op.122 organ work. Widely admired and performed are Glanert’s dual engagements with Brahms’s Four Serious Songs op.121, available both as a straight transcription for baritone and orchestra, and in a version which intersperses Brahms’s songs with Glanert’s own musical commentary, with introductions and a postlude, in Four Preludes and Serious Songs.
> Further information on Work: Vier Präludien und Ernste Gesänge
Photo: Bettina Stöss