Brahms Requiem

St Mary’s Cathedral 26/3/25

St Mary’s Music School Spring Concert

Respighi ‘Suite for Organ and Strings’: St Mary’s String Ensemble, Valerie Pearson director, Calum Landon organ

Brahms ‘Ein Deutsches Requiem’: St Mary’s Music School Choir, St Mary’s Cathedral Choir, Benedicite Cathedral Youth Choir , Duncan Ferguson director, Benjamin Thomas and Ben-David Zasman pianists, Catriona Hewitson soprano, Ross Ramgobin baritone

 I had been alerted to this concert online, and since I am a sucker for the Brahms Requiem, I was delighted to attend. You may remember that I wrote an article about St Mary’s Music School last year on the EMR and I maintain a soft spot for this excellent institution. The Spring Concert was splendid.

I didn’t know Respighi’s Suite for Organ and Strings, but it was mightily impressive. As a vehicle for star pupil, Calum Landon, on the splendid cathedral organ, it was a perfect start to the evening. This young organist had played last week in the St Mary’s Showcase before the RSNO concert at the Usher Hall, and had created quite a stir. His playing tonight was muscular and expressive, and with the School String Ensemble (directed very discreetly by Valerie Pearson), we enjoyed a piece that I am sure was new to the vast majority of the audience, and proved to be extremely enjoyable.

 After a short interval, when a grand piano was brought on, the Choirs of St Mary’s Music School and St Mary’s Cathedral, along with the Cathedral choristers and the Benedicite Cathedral Youth Choir, performed Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem in the version for one piano and four hands which the composer made in 1869. Clearly we missed the magnificent orchestration that makes a live concert of the Requiem such a wondrous event, but the benefits in clarity of text, balance with young voices, money saving, and, I suppose, a sprinkling of novelty factor made for a very interesting concert. All the students in the school were involved in the performance, including the two young pianists, Benjamin Thomas and Ben-David Zasman, who were tasked with the onerous duty of turning Brahms superb orchestration into a tour de force of piano duet work!

St Mary’s had engaged two excellent young soloists for the crucial solo sections, Edinburgh-born Catriona Hewitson (Soprano) and English baritone, Ross Ramgobin, and they were superb. I hadn’t come across Mr Ramgobin before, but he is already beginning to make his mark in the profession, currently rehearsing Morales in ‘Carmen’ at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He possesses a smooth and elegant baritone, moving easily through the registers and with a good ring to his voice when needed. I look forward to hearing him more in the future.

Ms Hewitson has caught my attention recently, in Messiah at the Usher Hall and as Tytania in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ with Scottish Opera, and I surmised that the solo movement in the Brahms, ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’, would suit her voice perfectly. Indeed it did, with her ability to float exquisite lines high over the accompaniment, and the vocal power to dominate the climactic lines in her solo with ease. I see she won the 2018 Kathleen Ferrier Song Prize, nearly 40 years after I won the Decca Kathleen Ferrier Prize in 1981, establishing a nice link!

During the performance I got to reminiscing about when I first came across the Brahms Requiem, and I was horrified/delighted/ astonished to think that I sang the work as a boy treble with George Watson’s College Choir in 1967 – 58 years ago!!

 What can one say about this extraordinary work, first performed in Leipzig in 1869? Written after the death of Brahms’ mother, and surely with the mental collapse and death of Robert Schumann in his mind, the idea of writing a non liturgical German Protestant requiem was original and ground breaking.. Using Brahms’ love of polyphony and of older styles of composition, combined with the blazing fire of mid-19th Century Romanticism, he composed a work of amazing power and compassion, a requiem for the living to allow them to deal with death.

All these thoughts came to the fore as I listened to this lovely performance by St Mary’s School, directed by Duncan Ferguson, the Director of Music at St Mary’s Cathedral. I would have liked a bit more flexibility, drawing out special moments and pointing certain phrases in particular directions, and it all felt a bit fast, but I understand that, dealing with young performers, especially in a foreign language, the scope for interpretation is limited, and clarity is perhaps of the utmost importance.

The large audience was fulsome in its applause, and we rolled out into the late March night, satisfied and glowing internally.