The Vlaams Radiokoor and Het Banket, alongside actor and illustrator Wim Opbrouck, shed new light on Brahms' Requiem.
Johannes Brahms is an icon. Say Johannes, and you know it means Brahms. But how well do we really know Brahms? How close does he let us get to him in his music?
The major themes of this classic, sorrow and hope, are made universal and palpable. It becomes an even more human requiem where recognition, imagination, and solace take center stage.
Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem depicts the 19th-century individual in their quest for redemption amidst loss. The 21st-century rendition by the Vlaams Radiokoor and Het Banket portrays today's introspective and contemplative individual: just as Brahms sought the right notes and melodies to bring a bit of solace and hope in times of adversity, our thoughtful human seeks the right words, the right lines, the right images to console and hope.
Actor and illustrator Wim Opbrouck embodies this questing individual. He charts his way through darkness, seeking illumination and hope—until he is carried away by Brahms' and Schumann's heavenly notes.
programme
Johannes Brahms
Ein deutsches Requiem op.45 (Londoner Version)
Het Banket
concept, direction & text
reimagined requiem
For this performance, Het Banket creates a reimagined and more universal text that transcends faith and places humanity even more at the forefront. A more human-centered requiem. By building on the theme of transformation – from grain to harvest, from leaf to earth, from the earthly to the afterlife – the new text adaptation takes many motifs from the biblical original but places them in a broader perspective, allowing a wide audience to find resonance. Learn more about the reinterpretation by Het Banket.
with the support of Beside Tax Shelter and the Belgian Tax Shelter
listen to the recording by the Vlaams Radiokoor: