Silvia Colasanti: Requiem – Monica Bacelli

   in Choir & Organ (Nov, 2018)
Silvia Colasanti is one of Italy’s leading contemporary composers. Her Requiem ‘Stringeranno nei pugni una cometa’ (‘They shall clasp a comet in their fists’) was commissioned by the Spoleto Festival in memory of the victims of the 2016 earthquake in central Italy. Using words by the poet Mariangela Gualtieri (the reciter on this live recording), the Requiem was premiered at the Spoleto Festival. Rather like Britten’s War Requiem, the Latin Mass for the Dead is interpolated with Gualtieri’s spoken words. The Mass represents the ‘undoubting’ and the spoken text the ‘doubter’. It’s an intriguing idea, one hampered by this CD’s imperfect rendition of the spoken text, which has been poorly …