Elisabetta Brusa – Requiem • Stabat Mater

‘I have always wanted to compose a Requiem as I always thought it should be part of the output of a composer. However, once my parents died within a very short time from one another, it became a musical and spiritual necessity. I was terrified before I started composing each single movement, particularly because of the examples of the great masterworks of the past, but I just carried on with a bowed head and hoped for a bit of inspiration. Of all the movements, I never thought that the one of which I was most afraid, the Lacrimosa, with its melody imitating sobs and drops of tears, would turn out quite so well, as also the Lux aeterna, with its beams of light coming from various directions in the sky, and the peaceful sadness of the ending with the Libera me, a grandiose pleading of Freedom from Eternal Death.’

– Elisabetta Brusa

BRUSA, E.: Orchestral Works, Vol. 5 - Requiem / Stabat Mater

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Elisabetta BRUSA (b. 1954)
Orchestral Works, Vol. 5
Requiem
Stabat Mater

Réka Kristóf, Soprano • Dorottya Láng, Alto
István Horváth, Tenor • Marcell Bakonyi, Bass
Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir
Riccardo Frizza

Most of Elisabetta Brusa’s compositions have been written for orchestral forces, with four volumes currently available on Naxos. The two new choral pieces in this fifth volume offer a revealing look at the composer’s response to spirituality and her own feelings about the end of life. The Stabat Mater was written as a trial for the Requiem and features vocal parts that are often pushed to the limit of their extensions for maximum expressivity. Following traditional models, Brusa’s Requiem evokes an archaic atmosphere which gives the piece a medieval aura, contrasted with moments of luminous and transcendent music.

Listen to an extract from Requiem: Libera me