Hot off the presses is Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s beautiful recording of Resurrexit, which conjures the biblical narrative with magic and propulsion. Maestro Manfred Honneck inspired me to create a piece that offers a different approach to the biblical narrative, one powered by quicksilver textures suggestive of the reanimation of life.
Honneck is a devout Catholic who’s created a unique “spirituality in music” focus for some of his concerts, with imaginative stagings of masterworks like the Mozart Requiem. I didn’t know I could contribute.
But I soon found myself wondering if the Resurrection could be set in a vivid and magical way – a kind of antidote to the heavier settings of it by Mahler et al. The work ended up becoming my most propulsive piece, moving from biblical mystery to fire-like magic. Special percussion instruments from the church make cameos, such as the Byzantine Semantron to altar bells. I’ll always be thankful to Manfred for inspiring me to write this work.
