Croatian Requiem

Of Ukrainian origin, Boris Pigovat is now based in Israel where he has won several distinguished national awards. His Holocaust Requiem received the ACUM prize in 1995, and was premièred at a concert dedicated to the massacre of Jews at Babi Yar. Each movement is named after the Latin Mass text, the emotional symbols of sorrow, suffering and hope expressed purely instrumentally but led by the ‘human’ voice of the viola. The deliberately Russian Romantic style of Poem of Dawn was especially chosen by the composer for the work’s dedicatee, acclaimed violist Anna Serova.

The music of the Croatian composer and conductor Igor Kuljerić (1938-2006) is not yet well-known beyond the borders of his home country – but this recording will probably change all that. The "Croatian Glagolitic Requiem" - composed between 1995 and 1996, first performed in the Croatian town of Zadar in July 1996 by the chorus and symphony of Croatian Radio, and conducted by the composer himself - is an impressive and moving example of contemporary sacred music. The CD also contains a recording of the "Himna Slobodi" (“Hymn to Freedom”, also “Peace Hymn”) by the Croatian composer Jakov Gotovac (1895-1982), based on a text by the baroque poet Ivan Gunduli . The studio recording, with the Bavarian Radio Chorus and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Ivan Repuši , was made in January/February 2019.