Composer: Valentin Silvestrov
Performer: Priska Eser, Jutta Neumann, Andreas Hirtreiter, Wolfgang Klose, Michael Mantaj, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Orchestra: Munich Radio Orchestra
Conductor: Andres Mustonen
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: BR Klassik
Catalogue: 900344
Release: 2022
Size: 585 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Requiem für Larissa
01. I. Requiem aeternam. Largo – Allegro vivace
02. II. Tuba mirum. Adagio – Moderato – Allegro – Andantino
03. III. Lacrimosa dies illa. Largo – Allegro moderato
04. IV. Prochai svite. Largo
05. V. Agnus Dei. Andante – Moderato
06. VI. Requiem aeternam. Largo
07. VII. Requiem aeternam. Allegro moderato – Andantino
Valentin Silvestrov is probably the best-known Ukrainian composer, and his Requiem for Larissa was written in response to the unexpected death in 1996 of his wife, the music and literature scholar Larissa Bondarenko. She had stood by his side from the very beginning of his artistic career. It was in 1999, shortly before the turn of the millennium, that Silvestrov was finally able to complete his Requiem. He did not set a drama of the Last Judgement to music, as Mozart, Berlioz or Verdi had done before him, but rather wrote a lament – in seemingly endless, world-forlorn repetitions. The composer stepped out of the present and into the past, commenting on his life with Larissa with memories of music that had inspired her, and with profound allusions, retrospections and epilogues of the most personal nature. Silvestrov set the words of the Latin mass for the dead to music, yet he did not compose a mass in the sense of a liturgically close or ecclesiastically compatible piece of music. In his seven-movement requiem, the theological order of the Catholic requiem mass is irrevocably dissolved. As if religious gravity had been suspended, isolated words drift about freely and forlornly. The work begins and ends with “Requiem aeternam”. At the end, only the wind rushes out of the synthesiser – and, at the very end, an echo of the wind.