Three Sacred Songs for Voice & Orchestra

The great twentieth-century Russian poet, Mikhail Alexeevich Kuzmin, was for much of his early life also passionately devoted to composition. Masterpieces of the vocal miniature, his Sacred Songs for voice and orchestra are settings of his own words based on studies of ancient Russian music. His incidental music for Masquerade is notable for a heartfelt Romance and a closing chorus which draws upon traditional Russian church music. The Society of Honoured Bell Ringers displays Mahlerian and Mozartianinfluences whilst greater harmonic complexity can be savored in Kuzmin’s edgier music for Deer deutscheHeinemann.