Oxalys & Christianne Stotijn

Christianne Stotijn and Oxalys are embarking on a spiritual venture. Prayer and meditation are the common thread running through this mesmerising programme. Modest Mussorgsky looked for it in Jewish religious texts. 'Hebrew Song' and 'A Prayer' are heartbreaking, especially if you are aware that he wrote the latter for his dying mother. The Dutch composer Fant de Kanter (1969) also set a number of prayers to music. His arrangement of the 'Lord's Prayer' in Armenian for solo voice cuts you to the quick. Christianne Stotijn proves beyond a doubt that she's a born storyteller in Mussorgsky's song cycle 'Detskaja' (The Nursery). These are short, sharp psychological portraits of children, using often humorous texts that he wrote himself.