Though I was familiar with the name of Jean-Paul Dessy as a conductor and cellist, this is the first time I have heard his music. Requiems sets a series of texts taken from a number of different religious traditions, all of them dealing in some way with the end of earthly life. There is a brief introductory text by the composer giving his own interpretation of what a requiem might be (though his idea that metanoia means to ‘go beyond thought’ is stretching things), but the journey the work makes seems to be essentially towards Christianity – we begin with words from the Bhagavad Gita, move on to the Islamic affirmation that God is one, and then comes the Hebrew Kaddish. There follow the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, words from the Gospel of St John and the Greek Orthodox paschal troparion, and the work finishes with the words of the Latin Requiem Mass.

The music is hard to describe; it tries hard to correspond to the sound of each language, perhaps the most unexpected thing being the initial abrasiveness of the Kaddish which is followed by some string-writing that reminds me of no one so much as Philip Glass. The Aramaic and Greek movements (the latter in desperate need of a pronunciation coach) also have something of the monumentality of the Glass of Akhnaten, while the final Requiem is austerely static, and the most sheerly beautiful movement of the work. Performances are everything one would expect from the Estonians, under the secure direction of Risto Joost.

The disc is rounded off by two pieces for solo cello, played by the composer himself. These are highly idiomatic works, exploring spiritual themes in music that is at once challenging and beautiful, virtuoso and ecstatic.