"This is a lovely performance, sensitive to the work's consolatory mood, free-moving and sweetly sung... Throughout, Rattle strikes a shrewd balance between the work's affective nature and its narrative power... a performance which treats this great memorial prose poem with a mixture of acumen and affection that is entirely special."
Gramophone
"Simon Rattle has proven a reliable interpreter of the great works of German Romanticism, and as one might expect from, for example, his Schoenberg Gurrelieder, this is a very impressive account of Brahms's German Requiem, deeply considered and most beautifully played and sung."
BBC Music Magazine
"Recorded live in October 2006, Rattle conducts a warm and urgent account of Brahms' German Requiem, bright and fresh, with brilliant recording, heightening the drama in a work which with seven generally measures movements can seem to lack contrast."
The Penguin Guide
"A flexible line...characterizes Sir Simon Rattle's heavenly new Brahms Requiem with the superb Berlin Rundfunk Choir and ideal soloists in Dorothea Roschmann and Thomas Quasthoff."