World premiere recording of John Frandsen’s full-scale Requiem from 2010 – in remembrance of the victims of Utøya.

This world premiere recording presents the Danish composer John Frandsen's eloquent and moving Requiem (2010) for soloists, choir and orchestra. The work unfolds as a full-scale ‘operatic’ setting of the entire medieval Latin text in fascinating alternation with intimate solo hymns to Danish poems by Simon Grotrian (b.1961), sung by the young Faroese singer Teitur. The composer has dedicated his requiem to the victims of the tragedy on the Norwegian island of Utøya in 2011.

John Frandsen about his Requiem:
“There is no greater task for a composer than to write a Requiem. A great and exciting task – but also a fearsome one! You have to find a mode of expression that makes room for the greatest and most fundamental extremes in human life. Life and death, grief and solace, desperation and release, judgement and grace, perdition and victory – Heaven and Hell. Incomprehensibly violent forces have to be let loose.
I have decided to dedicate my Requiem to the memory of the victims on Utøya in Norway on 22 July 2011, when a right-wing extremist madman murdered 69 young people at a political summer camp. This atrocity happened, it is true, several months after my work was concluded, so the work was not written with this event in mind. But such an ice-cold, cynical crime defies certain quite fundamental social and religious values, and it has aroused a collective feelings of fear and powerlessness that calls for the healing power of ritual and the liturgy.
Peace be with all the innocent victims: Requiem aeternam."