Rinaldo was the closest Brahms ever came to composing an opera; the booklet-note writer goes so far as to describe it as an ‘ersatz opera’. Based on a poem by Goethe (itself based on Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata), it tells of Rinaldo (tenor solo) who, returning from the Crusades with his gallant knights (male chorus), is ensnared by the lovely but evil Armida (Brahms keeps her out of the musical action altogether) and held prisoner on her enchanted island (represented by a sumptuous orchestral introduction). In his review (9/87) of Sinopoli’s recording (one of only two other Rinaldo s currently available, both part of multi-disc sets) Richard Osborne suggests that Brahms identified with Rinaldo ‘first, as a composer tempted by that contemporary Jezebel, Wagnerian music-drama; secondly as a man stirred by the idea of forbidden passion’, and certainly there is something rather more raw and passionate here than is usual in Brahms’s choral music; and, moreover, something rather more emotionally charged than might reasonably be expected from a work originally intended as a test-piece for a choral competition.
According to Hans Gal, Goethe’s words ‘caused Brahms to put himself into a trance of enthusiasm’; which seems a pretty fair assessment of this recording. Michel Plasson throws himself into it with passion, spirit and total abandon, producing a performance vivid in its drama and almost nail-biting in its occasional bouts of excitement. The wonderful orchestral playing is captured in a stunningly lush recording, and Steve Davislim, as the eponymous hero, is thoroughly convincing in a way which gives real distinction to an already impressive release. Slight reservations about choral intonation might be put down to the fact that male-voice choirs always seem to sound this way.
Such excellence runs throughout this disc with, in particular, a captivating account of Brahms’s rarely heard Ellens Gesang II, an ingenious arrangement for soprano solo, female chorus, four horns and two bassoons of Schubert’s Jager, ruhe von der Jagd.'