REQUIEM, FOR VIOLIN SOLO

Igor Loboda
(b. Tbilisi, Georgia, 1956)

Composed 2014; 8 minutes

Loboda’s Requiem for violin solo was commissioned by Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili in 2014 after the Russian annexation of Crimea. Both Georgia and Ukraine have been victims of Russian aggression, and of wars in both recent and more historical times. Gidon Kremer regularly dedicates Loboda’s Requiem for violin solo “to the endless sufferings of Ukraine.” Requiem is a short, but powerful piece which graphically takes the listener inside those horrendous visual images of a war we have been witnessing day by day in real time. The piece opens with stark open fifths, then octaves presenting a bleak landscape. This then resolves into the music that lies at the heart of the piece, a simple, loving Ukrainian folk melody telling of the river Dnieper. Loboda struggles to re-establish the folksong against a barrage of double- and triple-stopped chords, both bowed and plucked, tremolos, an anguished intensive vibrato, and an ever-present threatening low G drone.

Georgian composer Igor Loboda has been a member of the Georgian Chamber (Kammer) Orchestra since 1981. Formerly the Georgian State Orchestra based in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, the GKO has been an orchestra-in-exile in Ingolstadt, Germany from 1990. Over 30 years later, this 16-piece string orchestra includes members almost entirely from Georgia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Loboda studied in both Tbilisi and St. Petersburg and has written numerous arrangements for the orchestra.