Vyacheslav Artyomov (b.1940) - Requiem

[Christopher]

I thought I would share another gem that I have discovered here in Russia:

Vyacheslav Petrovich Artyomov's Requiem "To the Martyrs of Long Suffering Russia".  The whole requiem is over one hour long, but I like it just for its Domine Jesu Christe.  The rest of it is twentieth-century-atonal, but then 35 minutes in there is suddenly the most beautiful harmony which on its own lifts the whole work.  You can listen to the Domine Jesu Christe here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8EtL8jLFo&feature=related       and to a much larger excerpt here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoojDNgaIMY&feature=related       (I strongly suggest listening to the Domine Jesu Christe first!).

Unusually for a Russian religious work, it has instrumentation and uses the Latin text.

The work was briefly mentioned in another string on this site on Requiems.  On the website http://www.requiemsurvey.org/composers.php?id=29 it says the following:

Vyacheslav Artyomov (29/06/1940), a Russian composer, born in Moscow. He first studied physics at the University of Moscow, then transferred to the Tchaikovsky Conservatory where he studied composition with Nikolai Sidelnikov until 1968.
He has been a freelance composer since 1979.
Vyacheslav Artyomov has dedicated his requiem to "Martyrs of Long Suffering Russia" and, on a scale commensurate to the immensity of the tragedy, has created a gigantic sound epic, a majestic monument with meticulously elaborate details, fine treatment of each feature and all- immense. A grandiose painting, it provides a subject for a long, close "contemplation" - going into and taken by semantic meaning, then it amazes one with its majesty, the might of its artistic impression.
The composer's choice of the Requiem was symbolic to him for the complicity of the Russian tragedy with tragedies of the world history and for its joining with eternal spiritual values, the eventual cognition of which takes place only on the borderline between life and death.
With all this the composer interprets traditional text of the requiem in a different way, projecting it at the events of national history, comprehending it as an onlooker, an eyewitness. Canonical text becomes an impulse, a source of pictures, images - appearing in the creative mind of a composer.
We perceive the continuity of Artyomov's Requiem with the best works of this genre in the world music, a deep, basic connection with the music of Bach. An illusion of a boundless sound space, of the cosmic scale of "action". It has a zone of associative analogies with Scriabin's cosmos. The radiant light of the 'Sanctus' addresses the listener's memory to pages of The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh by Rimsky-Korsakov. And the very conception of the composition – the redemption, quiet forgiveness and rise of the spirit in the face of the eternity. It the healing conception of all great Russian art.