January 25, 2025 | Svetlanov Hall of the MIPAC
XV Moscow Christmas Festival of Sacred Music
The Closing Concert
Academic Grand Choir “Masters of Choral Singing”
Soloists: Polina Shabunina, soprano
Polina Shamaeva, mezzo-soprano
Alexei Neklyudov, tenor
Igor Podoplelov, baritone
Conductor – Vladimir Spivakov
Karamanov. Requiem
Taneyev. “John of Damascus”, cantata for choir and orchestra, Op. 1
The Christmas Festival, which has taken place at the Moscow Performing Arts Center every year since 2011, will celebrate its 15th anniversary. The Festival, which occurs during Christmas celebrations, has become a good tradition to acquaint wider audiences with the long history of Christian music culture. Closing each event, Vladimir Spivakov and the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia usually present masterpieces of sacred music of various epochs, styles and composition schools. This year the maestro has chosen only works by Russian composers. The concert will be shared with the “Masters of Choral Singing” directed by Lev Kontorovich and soloists of leading opera houses.
The main point of the program will be Requiem (1971) by Alemdar Karamanov, great master of the 20th century from Crimea. The performance is dedicated to his 90th birthday anniversary. This is the Russian precedent of a mournful Mass to the canonical Latin text (as exemplified by Mozart) that served as a landmark for many of Karamanov's contemporaries. In his work the composer realized the idea of the continuance of time by applying numerous allusions to the music of the past and stylistic signatures of various epochs (from the Middle Ages to the 20th century) and managed to infuse new concepts into the traditional genre using his own outstanding style.
'There is such a thing as revelation which is given to very few, - says Vladimir Spivakov about the Requiem. - This music is imbued with the revelation that is descending onto a man from above. And Karamanov belonged to rare creators-recluses whom Schnittke considered to be the only genius among very talented colleagues.'
Alemdar Karamanov described his art in the following words: 'There is life in my music, and not only religious life, but any life which is not fading but is constantly expanding... I absolutely do not write church music... I just tried with all my might to translate the spirit of the Gospels, the spirit of religious scripts of Christianity... I have written music to the Gospels, Apocalypse, I have written Stabat Mater, Requiem, Mass to Latin texts, and they are large symphonies, cycles with many movements. During all this long time of my approaching religion, they have expressed its spirit, its essence but in modern terms and in the modern music language... Those seemingly waned, dead ancient structures have returned to normal human life. I have put all my soul into them, I believed in that and understood that behind those cold structures there had been hidden a profound eternal life.'
Part 2 will feature Sergei Taneyev's famous cantata “John of Damascus” on the text by Alexei Tolstoy about the life and fate of the legendary Christian saint, theologian and creator of chant songs. Vladimir Spivakov finds the composition to be one of the apexes of Russian choral classics, “a great musical prophecy”. The maestro earlier recorded Taneyev's Cantata with the Masters of Choral Singing and the NPR including it into the Holy Russia album.