Your trusted source

Renowned Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian's “Requiem” will be performed in Brno Philharmonic of the Czech Republic on 23-24 January for the first time, the philarmonic website reported.

The first part of the concert entitled “Bach and Mansurian” features Cantata No. 32 “Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen” (Dearest Jesus, my desire) and Cantata No. 68 “Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt” (God so loved the world) by German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, with “Requiem” set to be performed in the second part of the event.

Mansurian wrote his exceptionally forceful 2011 "Requiem" at the instigation of the conductor Alexander Liebreich and dedicated it to the memory of the Armenian Genocide victims.

Co-commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the RIAS Choir Berlin, Mansurian’s "Requiem" reconciles the sound and sensibility of his country’s traditions with those of Western practices, the combination of ancient Armenian religious and secular music with the Latin Requiem text “giving rise to something unexpected,” the composer says.

This is profoundly moving contemporary composition, illuminated by the “glow of Armenian modality,” as Paul Griffiths puts it in his booklet essay. The work is a milestone for Mansurian, widely acknowledged as Armenia’s greatest composer. The Los Angeles Times has described his music as that “in which deep cultural pain is quieted through an eerily calm, heart-wrenching beauty.”

The work was honoured by the prestigious International Classical Music Awards 2018 and nominated for a Grammy in 2017.

On November 19, 2011 the Chamber Philharmonic Hall of Berlin hosted the world premiere of “Requiem".