Iida Antola’s debut album “The truth about love”, with Kirill Kozlovski at the piano.

The programme consists of three song cycles that were composed during the Second World War: Cabaret Songs (1937-39) by Benjamin Britten, 5 Liebeslieder nach Ricarda Huch (1939) by Viktor Ullmann and Chants de terre et de ciel (1938) by Olivier Messiaen.

The lives of all three of these composers were deeply affected by the war: Britten was forced to spend much of the war in America and, upon returning to England, applied to be a conscientious objector to avoid con-scription; Messiaen was conscripted into the medical corps of the French army and spent a year in a Nazi prison camp; and Ullmann, being of Jewish background, was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942 and exterminated in Auschwitz in 1944.

Though the oppression of war can be felt in these three song cycles, they are true ambassadors of love and hope. Despite the tumultuous period in which these cycles were written, the common thread in all three is love, which gives the release its name: “The truth about love”.