Requiem [CD]

The Singapore Symphony and it's music director Hans Graf present a recording of Józef Kozlowski's Requiem, together with the Singapore Symphony Chorus & Youth Choir, as well as a quartet of outstanding soloists: Olga Peretyatko (soprano), Olesya Petrova (mezzo-soprano), Boris Stepanov (tenor) and Christoph Seidl (bass). The Requiem (1798) was commissioned to Kozlowski by the abdicated King Stanislaw of Poland, and can be perceived as a requiem not just for the monarch, but for the entire Polish nation, absorbed by the Russian state during the 1780s. Interestingly, the work was also heard during the funeral of Tsar Alexander I of Russia, in a different version with heavier orchestration and choruses for more drama. The current recording uses a new edition created by conductor Graf himself, realizing the intimate character of the original 1798 version. Composed just 7 years after Mozart's famous Requiem, the work is rooted in Viennese Classicism, yet also adumbrates nineteenth-century developments, with a subtle Slavonic tinge. This revival is a gem to anyone interested in music from the early Romantic era.