THE SEVEN LAST WORDS

Price: £13.98 inc. VAT (£11.90 ex. VAT)

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Release Date: 29-11-2003

Label: C C n´ C

Catalog Number: CC02532

Barcode: 723091025324

Musical Style: World

Track Listing:

Disc 1
1	Introduction [04:33]	6	Sonata V. I thirst [08:43]
2	Sonata I. Father, forgive them - for they know not what they do [05:15]	7	Sonata VI. It is finished [07:33]
3	Sonata II. Amen. I say to you: today you will be with me in Paradise [08:59]	8	Sonata VII. Father, into Thy Hands I commit my spirit [07:15]
4	Sonata III. Woman, behold your son [08:59]	9	Earthquake [01:58]
5	Sonata IV. God, God, why have you forsaken me [06:46]

Reviews:

When I first heard Berlin's Akademie für Alte Musik, I imagined I would never again encounter a period instrument sound or precision to compare with it. But nothing ever stands still in the early music world; now Moscow has done it too. Out of Russia, that hotbed of individual virtuosity steps an exciting new period band which made its US debut in February, entitled Opus Posth., and it's simply a knockout.

This disc is a bit like discovering Mikhail Pletnev, Valery Gergiev and Vladimir Ashkenazy at one swoop. The playing is bold, forthright, uncompromising; the rhythmic sense precise; The music's onward sweep, unerring.

Rest assured, this evocation of Christ's crucifixion is anything but gentle. Rather, the full horror is unveiled: the agony, the pathos and the uncertainty. It has delicacy, tenderness, a tangible love about it, as well as urgency and drama. This arrangement of the nine-movement work is not even one of the many familiar ones. Rather, leader Tatiana Grindenko has revamped the work into a string nonet with double bass. The result is searing, passionate and highly successful.

The performance is packed with insight: in the twangy, semi-staccato lower strings of the First Sonata (Father, forgive), or in the second, which opens out like a window on Paradise. There is no soppy sentimentality in these richly gritty readings: Mary and St John almost literally weep in the cellos and basses (Sonata no.3). The Sitio (I thirst) sequence is plangent and haunting. When the temple veil is rent, the flames lick all around you. Superb playing and stunning sound from the Mosfilms studios. - Roderic Dunnett - The Strad UK 09/03

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