Until Naxos took up his cause, Alexander Dmitriyevich Kastalsky (1856-1926) was little more than a footnote in the history of Russian music. A student of Tchaikovsky at the Moscow Conservatory, he went on to become a composer primarily of choral music and, especially after the Revolution, a passionate folklorist.

Album artwork

The booklet announces that Kastalsky’s Requiem for Fallen Brothers “stands as the only large-scale choral-orchestral work written specifically in response to the unprecedented loss of life and devastation brought about by the First World War”. That’s not entirely true, as anyone who knows John Foulds’ A World Requiem will affirm,...