Shostakovich: Mariss Jansons

Reference Recordings® proudly presents the beloved Requiem of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in a very special interpretation. Academy Award and Golden-Globe-winning film and Broadway star F. Murray Abraham joins Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for Honeck’s dramatic conception of “Requiem: Mozart’s Death in Words and Music.” Over a decade ago, Honeck contemporized Mozart’s epic masterpiece by incorporating text into the score. F. Murray Abraham, Manfred Honeck, and the Orchestra previously performed “Requiem: Mozart’s Death in Words and Music” at Heinz Hall in 2012 and at Carnegie Hall in 2014.

Born in what is now part of Latvia, Carl Davidoff (1838–89) completed a degree in mathematics at the St. Petersburg University before he enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory to study composition. He had been playing cello, however, since he was 12; after renowned cellist Friedrich Wilhelm Grutzmacher departed his post, Davidoff, at 22, was offered his cello professorship at the Leipzig Conservatory. In 1876, after internal squabbling among the administrators of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Davidoff was appointed that institution’s director, no doubt to the displeasure of Tchaikovsky, who had been a candidate for the position.