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ABC Classic is thrilled to present the world premiere recordings of two concertos by Elena Kats-Chernin: Ancient Letters, inspired by 1700-year-old letters from the Silk Road, and her third piano concerto, Lebewohl, written expressly for acclaimed Australian pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska, who brings these passionate and profoundly moving works to life with her unique combination of dazzling virtuosity and poetic sensitivity.

Kats-Chernin and Cislowska have worked together closely on many music projects over the past three decades, with a rare level of mutual understanding; past albums include Butterflying (2016) and Unsent Love Letters (2017), both spending weeks at the top of the ARIA Classical charts. For this project, Kats-Chernin has once again written works specifically with Cislowska’s artistic genius and inimitable sound in mind, supported by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

The ‘Ancient Letters’, preserved in string and silk across the centuries, are the first known documents of the Sogdian people who lived across what is today Uzbekistan – the place where Kats-Chernin was born. They tell of a woman named Mewnai – Tiger Cub – whose husband has not returned, leaving her in fear that she and her daughter will be sold into slavery. Kats-Chernin’s sweeping and evocative concerto offers what the composer calls ‘a portrait of this feisty, desperate, beautiful, deserted woman: her story spoke to me across the ages.’

Commissioned for Cislowska, Kats-Chernin’s third piano concerto, Lebewohl (meaning ‘Farewell’) explores the core and soul of Johann Sebastian Bach at its nadir, as he returned home from a journey only to discover as he crossed the threshold into his house that his beloved wife of 13 years, whom he had left hale and hearty just six weeks earlier, was now dead – and buried. ‘How did this affect him?’ wonders Cislowska. ‘At what cost the psychological torment of being powerless to intercede in the most disastrous loss? Did Johann Sebastian have a crisis of faith? Shake his fists in rage at his beloved God?’ The five movements follow the imagined stages of JS Bach’s bereavement that ensued: shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, reflection and loneliness, acceptance and reconstruction.

The album also features a new version of Kats-Chernin’s magical Eliza Aria, reimagined for piano solo and orchestra, along with three solo piano works celebrating the composer’s deep love of the music of Bach: Prelude Machine, full of ‘vigour, joy and Bach’; the energetic Bach Study, built out from the opening notes of Bach’s first Cello Suite; and 1720, a lament for Maria Barbara Bach – ‘quiet, dignified, sorrowful, the way I imagine this extraordinary woman lived her life.’