Malta Pandeva in Maxim Bulgary

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Rysanov’s ONYX debut is of two extraordinarily beautiful and haunting works for viola and chorus/orchestra: both written for Bashmet, and the Tavener is a world-première recording! Giya Kancheli’s Styx is already renowned as a choral masterpiece for the 21st century, The River Styx in Greek mythology separates the living from the dead and the solo viola mediates between the two. John Tavener’s The Myrrh-Bearer is another epic, this time based on the Troparion of Cassiane, a Byzantine poet and composer. Here the viola represents the sin of Mary Magdalen. Both works were recorded in the amazing Dome Cathedral in Riga, Latvia, the largest medieval church in the Baltics, has just the right expansive acoustic for this music.

Violist Maxim Rysanov, who has spent much of his career in Britain, is one of the world's preeminent players of his instrument. When famed Russian violist Yuri Bashmet heard Rysanov play, he is said to have remarked, "My rival has arrived!" Rysanov also pursues a parallel career as a conductor. Rysanov was born in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1978. He was sent to the Central Special Music School in Moscow, where he studied with Maria Sitkovskaya, and then took advantage of Russia's opening to the West in the 1990s and enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. There, he studied viola with John Glickman and conducting with Alan Hazeldine. In 2000, he won Guildhall's gold medal. As a violist, Rysanov has had a high-flying career since winning designation as a BBC New Generation Artist in 2007 and winning the Gramophone Young Artist of the Year in 2008.