Beslan/Requiem – CD Release

Wednesday 30th September 2015
At last – now available on Amazon UK

You may have heard the performance of Beslan at St George’s, Southwark last October; it’s about the school siege which happened 11 years ago in Beslan, North Ossetia, when Islamic militants occupied a school and held over 1,100 people hostage for three days; eventually Russian troops stormed the building. Over 385 people died, including 156 children.

This event is of particular interest to us because as you may already know, our grandfather came from the Caucasus.

Beslan is scored for a group of solo voices accompanied by flute, violin, guitar, accordion, piano, double bass and percussion. There’s more information about Beslan here.

Requiem forms a contrasting companion-piece, as it’s scored for unaccompanied choir and soloists; the familiar sections of the Requiem are interspersed with short solo songs, with authentic texts in Latin and Greek taken from inscriptions in the early Christian catacombs – simple epitaphs by people like us, written for their loved ones; they recall the ancient world and the basic, powerful emotions which gave birth to the elaborate rituals we know today. You can read more about Requiem here.

You can buy the CD by following this link to the Amazon page. I hope you like it – Tony and I are are both really excited by the quality of the performances and the recording. Also, if you know anyone else who might be interested, could you please forward the email on to them – or just use the ‘share’ buttons at the end.