Johannes Brahms’ A German Requiem, one of the most beloved choral works in the classical music repertoire, is the centerpiece of the New Hampshire Master Chorale’s spring concerts on June 14 in Concord and June 15 in Plymouth.

The performances offer a rare opportunity to hear the chamber concert version Brahms wrote in 1871 for chorus and soloists, accompanied by piano, four hands in a new English translation.

Master Chorale director Dan Perkins calls the Brahms Requiem “a grand, universal hymn to life that overturned the traditionally dark concept of a requiem Mass with positive vision.”

Before Brahms, musical settings of the requiem Mass were in Latin, with heavy emphasis on sorrow, a fiery Day of Judgment, and preoccupation with the eternal fate of the departed. Brahms’ humanist Requiem was a radical departure, stressing consolation for the living over prayers for the dead.

That was a radical departure at the time of its premiere 157 years ago. But Brahms’ Requiem achieved immediate success and has remained popular ever since – next to Handel’s Messiah the most often performed of all choral-orchestral works.

Perkins says the chamber concert version will offer a fresh experience for those who have only heard the Brahms Requiem performed in German by a large chorus with orchestra accompaniment.

“While we do miss the glorious colors of the orchestra, this version allows the chorus to really take center stage,” Perkins says. “Without the barriers of language and large orchestral forces, this experience offers the ability to meet the performers and listeners where we are.”

The upcoming concerts will also include a Brahms choral art song, Waldesnacht (Woodland Night) and an affecting 2016 piece by Joel Thompson, The Caged Bird Sings for Freedom, a setting of Maya Angelou’s well-known poem and 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

The Saturday, June 14 concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Church, 21 Centre Street, in downtown Concord. The Sunday, June 15 performance is at 4:00 p.m. at the Plymouth Congregational Church. Tickets are available through nhmasterchorale.org.

The NH Master Chorale, a 30-voice ensemble completing its 21st season, will be joined by Tami Petty, an acclaimed soprano based in New York City, and bass-baritone Mark Andrew Cleveland, a New Hampshire-born singer from Boston with a national and international solo resume. Pianists will be Charles and Elizabeth Blood, father-daughter collaborative pianists who are familiar to New Hampshire audiences.

Lara Hoggard is the author of the English translation in these performances, published in 1997.

Brahms’ original score of A German Requiem called for an orchestra of 71 players; its premiere involved a chorus of 200. Typical performances since then have been on a large scale, although many people are familiar with organ accompaniments for the entire seven-movement work or excerpts.

The slimmed-down version in the upcoming concerts is both familiar and strikingly different. The piano accompaniment is lighter and more transparent, putting the chorus in the foreground. That allows more nuanced and expressive presentation of Brahms’ carefully chosen texts.

Most of those texts come from the Lutheran Bible, including Gospel scriptures, Psalms, the Epistles of St. Paul and the Book of Isaiah. But Brahms also selected passages from Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon – texts known as Apochrypha not considered part of the Biblical canon.

Most radically, for Brahms’ time, his Requiem makes no mention of Jesus Christ. This reflects the composer’s own beliefs. He was well-acquainted with the Lutheran Bible – by his account he read it every day – but was not conventionally religious.

Brahms was intent on writing what he called a “requiem for all humankind,” not specifically for Christian believers.

With its focus on comfort for the living, Brahms’ Requiem also reflects his own deep need for consolation. He began thinking of writing it after the tragic death of his mentor and champion, the German Romantic composer Robert Schumann, at the age of 46. Scholars believe he felt compelled to compose it after coming upon a reference in Schumann’s papers to his plan for a German Requiem.

But it wasn’t until nine years later that Brahms began in earnest to compose his Requiem after the death of his mother, at the age of 76, after a life of poverty and toil as a seamstress. The fifth movement of the Requiem, added after the premiere, is clearly a tribute to her. It concludes with a poignant quote from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah: “I will give you comfort, as one whom his own mother comforts.”

The second half of the June concerts opens with Waldesnacht (“Woodland Night”), Brahms’ setting of a Romantic poem that echoes themes in the Requiem – a yearning for peace and calm for a restless poet seeking escape from “worldly thunder.”

The Caged Bird Sings for Freedom, Joel Thompson’s setting of Maya Angelou’s famous poem, is also about release – this time from oppression and captivity, literal or metaphorical. Though it brings to mind the long history of Black Americans whom Angelou spoke for, it evokes in our current time other images, such as immigrants detained and deported to uncertain fates in foreign prisons.