Erwartung

Alexander Blok (1880-1921)

“Stalingrad was a crucial point in the Second World War, as the Russian victory led to the liberation of the World from Nazism. But for the Soviet Union it also meant the victory of Stalin's regime for another eight years at least.
My one-movement composition is called ‘Erwartung’, because it begins with the seemingly peaceful landscape of a waste land, but at the same time with the feeling of anticipation of a great battle with thousands of victims on both sides. The decisive battle is depicted from bar 101. At the end of the piece I included a choir (as a coda) setting a poem of the great Russian poet Alexander Blok. The words of the poem could be the words out of the grave of an unknown soldier. So it is a little Requiem for all the innocent victims of that battle and the Second World War in general. In the last 7 bars you still hear the pianissimo of a side drum reminding us of the many battles and victims that were still to come …” (E. Firsova)