This coming Sunday, 12 December, the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre will host the St Petersburg premiere of the cantata God Saves All to verse by Anna Akhmatova. The opus was written by the composer and conductor Felix Kruglikov, who trained at the Leningrad Conservatory under Ilya Musin and Arvīds Jansons and who in the late 1970s emigrated to the USA. The composer has spent the last few weeks in St Petersburg, refining the opus and rehearsing the premiere along with Mariinsky Theatre performers.
The cantata God Saves All for mixed chorus, symphony orchestra and soloists was written in 2019. The premiere was held in Tbilisi. The opus is based on late texts by Anna Akhmatova: extracts from Poem without a Hero, Requiem and verse from the 1940s. The title includes words from the Sheremetev family coat of arms, which adorns the archway of the grand courtyard of the Fountain House, the place where the poetess spent most of her life. The motto – “Deus conservat omnia”, taken as an epigraph to Poem without a Hero – leads one to reflect just how important it was for Akhmatova to understand remembrance of the past.
Thoughts of her own destiny and the destiny of her contemporaries in the tragic years of Russian history as well as the Christian motifs of Akhmatova’s lyricism served as a starting point for the music. It has something of a memorial character, with many of the episodes having been written with a nod to the tradition of Russian Orthodox Church singing. The composer has stated that he encrypted the initials of Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova – AAA – in three beats of the bell in A key.
The cast features two solo female voices – soprano and mezzo-soprano; at the premiere, these roles are to be performed by Mariinsky Theatre soloists Anastasia Kalagina and Anna Kiknadze. The choral part of the opus will be performed by an ensemble of soloists of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers. To complement the cantata, the conductor Christian Knapp has selected van Beethoven’s Sixth Pastoral symphony.
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