Martin: Messe fur Doppelchor / Kodaly: Missa Brevis / Poulenc: Litanies (Peter Dijkstra) (Hybrid SACD, Br-Klassik)

When Peter Dijkstra took over the direction of the Bavarian Radio Choir in October 2005 at the age of only 26, a work by the Swiss composer Frank Martin was on the program of the inaugural concert. The present a cappella production also begins with Frank Martin. His mass for double choir had its world premiere 40 years after its completion, but is now considered one of his main works. Zoltán Kodály’s Missa brevis is directly shaped by the desperate impotence in the face of the horrors of the Second World War. Francis Poulenc’s Litanies à la Vierge Noire are an expression of his turn to religiosity, to which the composer, who was previously considered a dandy, found through a pilgrimage in 1935 and which he found in connection with the tragic accidental death of his friend and colleague Pierre-Octave Ferroud in 1936 processed in this plant.