Kansas City Symphony: Matthias Pintscher - Brahms' German Requiem

Kansas City Symphony: Matthias Pintscher - Brahms' German Requiem at Helzberg Hall - Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

Brahms wrote his requiem for those left behind. Rather than Latin prayers for the dead, he chose German Bible verses that speak directly to grief and comfort, creating music meant to console the living. That human tenderness turns A German Requiem into something profoundly personal—an acknowledgment that mourning needs beauty, not ritual distance.

The Kansas City Symphony presents this masterwork alongside Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, which gives voice to Holocaust memory through narration and defiance. Conductor Matthias Pintscher brings these contrasting works together, with narrator Joshua Malina, soprano Sophia Burgos, bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams and the Kansas City Symphony Chorus directed by Betsy Burleigh. Schoenberg's urgent expression of faith and resistance deepens the evening's emotional scope, making the program both memorial and affirmation.

At Helzberg Hall in Kansas City, Missouri, the chorus joins the Kansas City Symphony for Brahms' German-language response to loss. Sophia Burgos and Andrew Foster-Williams add solo voices to a work centered on those who mourn, while Malina's narration gives Schoenberg's remembrance another human voice.

Neuwirth's Tombeau I is also on the program, placing a third composition alongside the distinct responses to loss in Brahms and Schoenberg. On November 20, the Symphony brings all three works together under Pintscher's direction, inviting you to hear consolation and defiance in the same concert.

For Brahms' consolation and Schoenberg's defiance, get tickets to the November 20 performance.