Organization

Conductor

Arif Dadashev

Singer

Baritone

Grigory Soloviov

Bariton

Tenor

Sergey Ababkin

Soprano

Yulia Petrachuk

Others

The Moscow Synodal Choir

Orchestra

Voce Anima Orchestra

Arielle Ensemble

Lyrica Classic

Executive producer

Andrey Nemzer

Countertenor

Bass

To the Sobbing of the Bells

Moscow

Russia

Moscow International Performing Art Center

To the Sobbing of the Bells: Requiem Tamar

Public

Requiem

The Bells

Approved

Ababkin, Dadashev, Petrachuk, Soloviov

“To the Sobbing of the Bells” concert program includes two large-scale choral works – “Requiem” by the contemporary American-Israeli composer Eli Tamar and the poem for soloists, choir, and orchestra “The Bells” by the Russian-American composer Sergei Rachmaninoff performed by the Moscow Synodal Choir, the Arielle vocal ensemble and the Voce Anima orchestra under the direction of the leading conductor of the Stanislavsky Musical Theatre and Mariinsky Theater, Arif Dadashev, as well as the leading soloists of the world music scene:

 

Countertenor Andrey Nemzer – soloist of the Metropolitan Opera and the MusicAeterna ensemble;
Soprano Yulia Petrachuk – a singer who conquered Carnegie Hall in New York and Musikverein in Vienna; 
Tenor Sergei Ababkin – laureate of the international competition named after A. Lo Forese in Milan, finalist of the international competition named after B. Franchi in Pienza (Italy), soloist of the theater Helikon-Opera (Russia) and opera La Scala (Italy);
Bass-baritone Grigory Solovyov – a soloist at the Helikon-Opera Theater, the Metropolitan Opera and the Washington National Opera in the USA, the Bolshoi Theater of Russia, and many other theaters worldwide. 
 
One of the main artists of the evening is the famous video artist Sue Slagle, a Creative Capital award winner, and a MacDowell Fellow; she was featured in The Wire, BoingBoing magazines, and in the book Programming Media MIT Press. Her digital works specially created for festival concerts are projected onto large screens during performances. Sue uses the latest technology and invents her own. Her digital visual worlds are created with the active participation of composers. The artist does not use digital graphics or ready-made video materials in her work. She makes her worlds with her hands. A live recording on camera of the action of her hands with various objects is not an illustration of music but an independent voice of the composition’s score.

HISTORY OF CREATION
Eli Tamar began work on his “Requiem” in 2020, at the height of the coronavirus epidemic. The work was completed in 2021 and is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the pandemic. The composer chose the texts for his requiem from two sources: a Catholic funeral mass and a Jewish prayer for the dead, “El Male Rahamim” (“God full of mercy”). The work consists of 14 movements and is built according to the concerto principle, with a pronounced dialogue between solo and tutti. On a symbolic level, the soloist in “Requiem” personifies both the grieving individual and the community leader represented in the music by the choir. 

The world premiere of “Requiem” was performed in 2021 at the Sobornaya Palata in Moscow by the Moscow Synodal Choir, conducted by Michael Kotelnikov, and the renowned mezzo-soprano Polina Shamaeva, soloist of the Novaya Opera Theater and the Hungarian State Opera House in Budapest.

“The Bells” is Sergei Rachmaninoff’s most significant and major work of the early 1910s, designated in the score as “a poem for symphony orchestra, choir, and soloists.” “The Bells” are among the outstanding Russian musical works on the eve of the First World War and were first performed in 1913 in St. Petersburg by the choir, soloists, and orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater conducted by the composer. 

This work is based on a poem by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Rachmaninoff’s focus is not on individual human destinies but on a Man with a capital letter whose appearance and private-individual features have been erased. Likewise, the choir represents not a living mass of people but Mankind in a state of extreme confusion and horror before an imminent impending catastrophe.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble