Mirga Tyla

Tragic love story: after her celebrated album with Benjamin Britten's “Sinfonia da Requiem”, the Lithuanian star conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is dedicating her latest release to a composition by William Walton that has hitherto hardly been noticed in this country: the opera “Troilus and Cressida”. The stage work is full of energy, drama and surprising twists. First performed in 1954 at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the opera soon fell into oblivion and is no longer on the repertoire of major theaters. The publisher of William Walton must have guessed what was in the work, because after the composer died in 1983, his publisher suggested the music writer and arranger Christopher Francis Palmer to create an orchestral suite with the musical highlights of the opera.

During the 21st century, Mieczysław Weinberg’s reputation has become such that he might be considered as the third great Soviet composer after Prokofiev and Shostakovich. This album will only enhance the regard in which he is held. The ear-opener here is the 55-minute Symphony No. 21, a six-movement work from 1991 subtitled “Kaddish” (the Jewish prayer for the dead). Weinberg’s parents and sister were murdered by the Nazis, and this powerful utterance remembers all the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, conducting her own City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Kremerata Baltica, makes every note count in this magnificent performance. Symphony No. 2, for strings alone, is a perfect foil—transparent, ethereal, and, again, rich with personality.

After the success of her Deutsche Grammaphon debut which she dedicated to the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Mirga Gražinyté-Tyla (together with Giedre Slekyte) now lets us discover works by Lithuanian composer Raminta Šerkšnyté: Music of transcendent beauty, harrowing and full of emotional force. A music that combines mystical experience and outbursts of vibrant energy. To Mirga, working together with Šerkšnyté has q quite special significance: “My connection with Raminta Šerkšnyté’s music is verypersonal. Probably what fascinates me most is the poetic quality and the mystery of this composer and her work. The ‘Ramintacism’, the minor thirds. Her personal voice."