THROUGHOUT the First World War, York Musical Society sang Brahms’s German Requiem in York Minster every November because of its beauty, humanity and the comfort of its words and music.

Yet those performances were controversial. "Throughout Britain, there were people who argued that works by German composers should be banned while the two countries were at war," says YMS's Joyce McKelvey.

"The debate was especially heated because York was the headquarters of the British Army’s Northern Command as well as home to a considerable garrison. YMS made a principled stand against widespread popular prejudice against everything German and sang the work throughout the war, and in German."

On November 12, this link with the past will be renewed when YMS are joined by the Münster Philharmonischer Chor, from York’s German twin city of Münster, for a 7.30pm joint performance in the Minster featuring choir, orchestra and baritone and soprano soloists.

First performed in 1868, the Requiem does not use the usual words of the Latin Requiem Mass. Instead, Brahms chose other words from the Old and New Testaments to comfort the bereaved.

"It is believed that Brahms wrote part of his Requiem after the attempted suicide of a close friend and most of the rest after the death of his own mother," says Joyce.

Next month's concert also will feature Richard Strauss’s moving Four Last Songs (Spring, September, When Falling Asleep and At Sunset), again sung in German. The songs, written for soprano soloist and orchestra, were composed only a year before Strauss’s death but were not performed until a year afterwards in 1949.

York Press:

Soprano Jenny Stafford. Picture: Donal Doherty Photography

The programme will be completed by Toward The Unknown Region. Set for choir and orchestra by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, it uses secular words by poet Walt Whitman, the Englishman's music ideally complementing  the American’s message of visionary hopefulness.

Conductor David Pipe says: “The combined forces of the York and Münster choirs will offer a wonderful palette of dynamic and tonal resources to exploit fully the huge variety and emotion in Brahms’s Requiem, and equally the sense of mystery and power in Vaughan Williams’ evocative Toward The Unknown Region.”

Pipe is director of the Organists Training Programme and Cathedral Organist the Diocese of Leeds and was formerly assistant director of music at York Minster.

The baritone soloist will be David Stout, who made his Royal Opera House debut in 2009. He has sung with English National Opera, Welsh National Opera and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment too.

Soprano soloist Jenny Stafford was born in Huddersfield and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. She won two prizes there and last year made her debut at the Wigmore Hall, where she was a semi-finalist in the Kathleen Ferrier Awards. She continues to study in London.

The concert is dedicated to Sir Donald Barron, who died last Christmas. He had been a member of YMS since 1953 and later became a very supportive patron, as well as playing a key role in many York organisations. His family are sponsoring the performance in his memory.

Tickets are available through the York Theatre Royal box office, 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person; at yorkminster.org or on the door.

Did you know?

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Toward The Unknown Region was his first major choral work and had its first performance in 1907 in Leeds when the composer was in his mid-30s.