Eloquence Classics

‘The veteran Swiss conductor was a fine Brahms conductor’ wrote Gramophone magazine and as these recordings prove, he was indeed. The majority of these recordings make their first international debut on CD, following repeated requests by Ansermet fans around the world. Classically poised, yet Romantically generous in their spirit, they make a welcome appearance on CD.

Surveying the series in his liner notes for this set, Colin Anderson writes: “Ansermet takes a broad view of Brahms’s Requiem setting; expressive and imploring at the outset but never mawkish, weighted in the second and not afraid to reveal the music’s bittersweet quality (fourth and fifth movements) while aiming for clarity in even the most lung-bursting, cathedral-filling passages. The music is typically well-analysed by Ansermet; although this is not a ‘heavyweight’ performance, the music emerges with a big, if burdened core, enough to convince that ‘Ein deutsches Requiem’ might just be Brahms’s greatest achievement. Similarly, Ansermet’s conducting of Brahms’s four symphonies is trusting and unvarnished, perceptive of the written page and overall structure while being generously appreciative of the music’s poetic machinations; music at once painstakingly Classical and heart-divulgingly Romantic.”