'And he treadeth, the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
'And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name called a King of Kings and a Lord of Lords. Alleluia. Amen.'
Subdued awe; firm, proud confidence in a mighty, beneficent ruler; a flash of fierce remembrance of injury—all are rendered with a power, a vividness, a picturesque strength, that are not transcended, even if they are equalled, by anything ever composed in the domain of choral music for the church or the concert-room; and the greatness and glory of 'a King of Kings and a Lord of Lords' are celebrated in the long final portion of this gorgeous third movement with dazzling brilliancy of effect, sustained and augmented up to the very end.
The first chorus, performed before the audience of two thousand people assembled in Bremen Cathedral on the evening of Good Friday, 1871, reached its effect to a very considerable extent.
'It has a broad and, as it were, popular character, is conceived simply and wrought with sincerity,' writes the correspondent of the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikzeitung.'
The Bremen Courier says:
'One again recognises the titanic capacity of the composer. The work is a vocal joy-symphony, of imposing power and exalted feeling. Praise is due to all concerned in the performance for they have facilitated the understanding of the composer to a large portion of the audience.'
The Dietrichs came from Oldenburg to hear the new work. Circumstances prevented the attendance of Frau Schumann and Joachim. Neither artist had returned from what had at this period become an annual visit of each to England, which, in Frau Schumann's case, generally extended over at least two months, and in Joachim's occupied the six weeks of Lent.
Pending Frau Schumann's return, Brahms remained among his friends in the north, and played his D minor Concerto at the Bremen orchestral subscription concert of April 25 with great success, giving pieces by Bach, Scarlatti, and Schumann in the second part. Frau Schumann was back in Lichtenthal early in May, and Brahms settled into his usual lodgings there a few days before her arrival. The present writer had the happiness of immediately following her, and the reader interested to learn particulars of the summer life of quiet work and simple pleasures that followed is referred to the Recollections placed at the beginning of our first volume. The details there given are too slight and too personal to be appropriate in the body of the present narrative, though they may be found to have a value of their own for those interested in whatever throws additional light on the true, lovable nature of Brahms.
It was about this time that our composer's art began to make perceptible progress in London. No immediate result was perceptible from the performance of the B flat Sextet led by Joachim at a Monday Popular concert of 1867, but from the beginning of the seventies we find Brahms' name appearing with some regularity in London programmes. No opportunity was lost by Frau Schumann, Joachim, or Stockhausen for making propaganda for their friend's music in private artistic circles. The performance of the Requiem at Sir Henry Thompson's house in the summer of 1871, under Stockhausen, has already been noted. Of minor incidents of the time in this connection, the singing of two duets from Op. 28 by Madame Viardot-Garcia and Stockhausen at a party given by the lady in London on June 10 may be selected for mention.[42]