Musica Russica releases Kastalsky’s “Requiem” and Steinberg’s “Passion Week”

Two new scores of masterwork stature have been published by Musica Russica.

The first, Alexander Kastalsky’s Memory Eternal to the Fallen Heroes, a setting of the Orthodox Requiem honoring the fallen soldiers of World War I, was published in 1917, and has yet to be performed in full or recorded in its Russian homeland. At the time of its partial premiere in Moscow, it was hailed as the most important Russian sacred work after Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil. 

The second, Maximilian Steinberg’s Passion Week, was composed in 1923, but never performed in Russia or anywhere else until its premiere in April 2014 by Portland-based Cappella Romana. (The present edition was prepared in conjunction with that premiere and the subsequent recording — mentioned in a separate announcement on ChoralNet.) This towering chant-based masterpiece builds upon Gretchaninoff’s Passion Week and Rachmaninoff’s Vigil, but in some respects surpasses both of those works. Steinberg was a student, protege, and eventually son-in-law of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and succeeded him as professor of composition at the St.Petersburg/Leningrad Conservatory.