Album Notes

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.
One more thing should be mentioned – the integrity of the artistic language of the composition, the beauty as an original, ethical provision of all means, all devices of expression. No extreme devices are used to affect the audience, no pressure, no excesses - strictly classical conception of the art.