Jorge Grundman’s album A Mortuis Resurgere: A Resurrection of Christ is being released in the US today.

The work, which features the Brodsky Quartet and soprano Susana Cordón, has been composed as a “follow on” from Haydn’s Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross and was premiered during Easter week 2013. Its religious nature means that the work has been composed with church performance in mind. In the composer’s words; “The characteristic of a church as an acoustic space is its very long reverberation time, making listening difficult in some passages, often rendering the voice unintelligible. I thus conceived the work for an average reverberation time of four to five seconds.” This concern with directness of expression and focus on acoustic effect is based on Jorge’s avid interest in acoustic science which has influenced many of his compositions.

A Mortuis Resurgere was described on UK website Arts Wrap as having “a wonderful range of emotions that have perfectly been interpreted by both Cordon and the Brodsky Quartet”. Also reviewed on SA-CD.net, it has been complimented as being accessible to both the religious and non-religious; “To a non-believer, this human drama is beautifully portrayed and lavished with rich expressiveness by the relatively small, and thus intimate, musical forces, ending with energetic jubilation as it does. To a believer, this fine performance might well fulfil Grundman’s hope that listening could induce a religious experience in them.” It has subsequently received criticial acclaim in the US prior to its release, winning the Boston Metro Opera Concert Award for Four Sad Seasons Over Madrid and the Boston Metro Opera Director’s Choice Award for God’s Sketches.

More information on the album can be found here.

Jorge Grundman

Photograph: Official site of Jorge Grundman