Kemp Concert Choir & Orchestra
Warren Puffer Jones - Kemp Concert Series
The Kemp Concert Series opened the 2017-18 season with a concert marking the 500th year anniversary of the Reformation with a performance of A German Requiem, Op 45 by Johannes Brahms presented on Sunday, September 24th at First Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma City. The performance of the complete seven movement requiem sung in German featured the Kemp Concert Choir and Orchestra, soprano Autumn West and baritone Jonathan Stinson, organist John L. Edwards and Warren Puffer Jones conducting and offered a pre-concert talk and supertitles in English to the gathered audience. A very personal and intimate portrait of the Johannes Brahms emerges in his Requiem, a sacred but non-liturgical piece which reshaped Brahms’ career. Though portions of the second movement were part of an earlier symphony begun in 1854 in response to Robert Schumann's attempted suicide, a more immediate impetus for the requiem as a whole was the death of Brahms' mother in 1865. The creation of the work also coincides with the composer's most intensive period of study of history and early music taking inspiration from George Frideric Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Schutz.
This program airs Saturday, October 28th, at 8pm on Classical 88.7 HD-1