Gramophone Magazine
June 2023
Recording of the Month

Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier

Scharmann: Gedenke, Herr, wie es uns gehet
Selle: Sinfonia Und da der Sabbath vergangen war
Schein: Selig sind, die da geistlich arm sind
Geist, C: Die mit Tranen saen
Michael, T: Die Erloseten des Herren
Briegel: Ach, Herr, lehre doch mich
Hammerschmidt: Ach wie gar nichts sind alle Menschen
Heinrich Schwemmer: Die Gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand
Schein: Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen
Schein: Ich will schweigen, und meinen Mund nicht auftun
Hammerschmidt: Der Tod ist verschlungen
Förtsch: Selig sind die Toten
Hammerschmidt: Ich hebe meine Augen auf zu den Bergen

Johannes Brahms drew texts from various Biblical sources for his Deutsches Requiem. As we hear in his choral music, he had a passion for polyphony and was inspired by models from the great Lutheran tradition of the late Renaissance and the Baroque. Ricercar and Vox Luminis have explored this early repertoire with the same passion for many years now, although with no less admiration for Brahms's masterpiece. It is no surprise that some of the texts that Brahms chose had already been set by his illustrious predecessors; it simply remained for us to trace a path through these earlier scores, so many meditations on death, and to assemble a very different Deutsches Requiem: one animated by the emotions of the Lutheran Baroque.

"Throughout this meticulously plotted alternative perspective on mostly familiar texts, Vox Luminis’s squad of up to 15 voices sing with the utmost sincerity of expression." - Gramophone Magazine, June 2023.