Musica Viva ends its 2024 – 2025 season with Johannes Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, which is one of the most imposing and profoundly moving musical statements in history. A work with personal significance to our Artistic Director, Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, Brahms’ Requiem is the most humanistic and universal of all the works of its type. As a companion to the Requiem, Musica Viva NY presents the opening movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, which was a formative early influence in Alejandro’s life-journey.

This musical program features an evocative selection of works by composers Ēriks Ešenvalds, Arvo Pärt, Jonathan Dove, Lili Boulanger, Veljo Tormis, and Gregorio Allegri. These pieces invite deep reflection on themes of interconnectedness in the human experience, the insignificance of human conflict when viewed through the lens of divine perspective and the immensity of the universe, and the ultimate futility of war. The music, rich in spiritual and emotional depth, transcends boundaries and offers a profound meditation on the shared human condition.

Reena Esmail’s beautiful This Love Between Us and Bach’s brilliant Magnificat make an interesting pairing, juxtaposing the familiar and the unfamiliar, the past and the present, and a young and talented Indian-American composer and a venerated German master. Esmail’s piece, written for the same orchestral instrumentation as the Magnificat, features the dynamic addition of sitar and tabla. Both works capture the awe and magnificence of our shared humanity.