EXCLUSIVE CD Release is FINALLY here!

CONTEXT: 

Ever since their appearance in Europe over a thousand years ago, the “Roma” – the ethnonym that the  Roma use to describe themselves – have been labeled with derogatory, disparaging, and ethnically  insulting words such as “G*psy”, “Zigeuner”, “Zingari”, “Cygan”, etc…, words derived from the Greek  “Atzinganoi”, which translates as “untouchable”. These designations reveal a brutal social hierarchy  which continues to plague and condemn the Roma to a pariah status in many places world-wide,  subjecting them to constant discrimination and persecution - punctuated by infernal periods of  enslavement and genocide. For centuries, literature about the Roma came exclusively from the ‘outside’,  by non-Roma authors looking in, and it is precisely this literature that has persistently perpetuated ethnic,  social and cultural stereotypes that have proven so harmful to this minority. It is not until the twentieth  century – but essentially only in the past fifty years, that Roma poets and writers have begun to express  themselves in written form in Romani (or Romanes), a macrolanguage of Romani communities, or in the  vernacular of the countries or regions within which they reside. These are watershed years, since for the  first time, the Roma ‘speak’ from ‘within’ to authentically express what has been shrouded in the fog of  popular imagination for ages. 

WORK DESCRIPTION: 

O Lungo Drom (“The Long Road” in Romanes) (2022) is an oratorio that tracks the history of the Roma  and Sinti (a subgroup of the Romani people found mostly in Germany) through the words of Sinti/Roma  poets and writers themselves. This oratorio contains many significant ‘firsts’: it is the first oratorio on a  Romani subject, the first that sets multiple texts by Romani authors, and the first to be set to music by a  

Rom. O Lungo Drom integrates texts from thirteen different poets from thirteen different Roma/Sinti  authors in ten languages and Romanes dialects, organized in a three-part narrative: I. Ascent - II. Nadir - III. Vista. Along with a Danse Macabre, Litany and echoes of Lili Marleen from Auschwitz, these voices  combine to pave and express worlds of melancholy, grief, nostalgia, and exultation through rhapsodic,  bittersweet, elegiac and introspective lyricism. 

The ensemble for the première, and the commissioning entity for the work is the Alban Berg Ensemble  Wien (ABEW), a Universal Music Group/DGG recording ensemble, with their first album released in  July 2020. The ensemble is supported by the Alban Berg Stiftung/Foundation in Vienna (which also  supported the Alban Berg Quartett in a similar role, the Hugo Wolf Quartet having studied directly with  the ABQ). The ABEW (flute, clarinet, piano & string quartet) - along with soprano Clara Meloni, baritone  Christoph Filler and cimbalomist László Rácz - just recorded the work for Decca in the Franz-Liszt  Zentrum Raiding (the birthplace of Franz Liszt, the first great Western composer to recognize Roma  culture in his own works) in the Burgenland outside Vienna. O Lungo Drom will be released by  Decca/Universal in spring 2024 and distributed globally by Decca Eloquence, based in Australia, the  executive producer being Cyrus Meher-Homji, senior vice-president of Universal Classics and Jazz. 

The work was commissioned by the Alban Berg Ensemble Wien, and is dedicated to Romani Rose, head  of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.

ROMANI ROSE, dedicatee of the work: 

The oratorio, commissioned by the Alban Berg Ensemble Wien is dedicated to Romani Rose  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_Rose), Germany’s leading Sinti and Roma human rights activist in  Germany. Rose, born in Heidelberg in 1946, lost 13 relatives in the Holocaust. Since June 1979 he has  led the work for the civil rights of German Sinti and Roma before the eyes of the German as well as the  international public; he has also fought for their protection from racism and discrimination, for  compensation for the survivors of the Holocaust – at the same time announcing the magnitude and the  historical importance of the genocide of 500,000 Sinti and Roma in National Socialist occupied Europe.  Following a hunger strike in 1980 in the former Dachau concentration camp, then Chancellor Helmut  Schmidt officially recognized the Nazi genocide against the Sinti and Roma. This led to the founding of  the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma 

in 1982, for which Romani Rose was voted to the position of Chairman by the delegates of the member  organizations – then nine, now 16 state and regional associations – and since then has been confirmed in  his post every four years at the member meetings. From 1991, Rose took over the management of the  Documentation and Culture Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg. For years he has been  known by the federal and state governments for his resoluteness and for his persistent and unyielding  work. Rose was also one of the driving forces behind the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of  National Socialism in Berlin. 

ALBAN BERG ENSEMBLE WIEN: 

O Lungo Drom was commissioned by the Alban Berg Ensemble Wien 

http://www.albanbergensemblewien.com. For the Decca recording they are joined by soprano  Clara Meloni https://www.clarameloni.com, baritone Christoph Filler https://www.machreich artists.com/en/artist/christoph-filler, and virtuoso cimbalomist László Rácz. This international cast of  musicians perform in some of the world’s most acclaimed opera houses and instrumental chamber groups  and orchestras, such as the Opéra de Nice, Opéra de Lausanne, Théâtre National de Marseille, Opéra de  Nancy, Opéra de Lyon, Opéra de Lille, Edinburgh Festival and Opéra de Metz, Deutsche Oper am Rhein  Düsseldorf, the Staatstheater Darmstadt, the Theater St. Galle, and the MusikTheater an der Wien the  Vienna-based Hugo Wolf String Quartet, the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Symphoniker, Wiener  Philharmoniker, Wiener Staatsoper, Orchestre National de France, Kammerorchester des Bayerischen  Rundfunks and the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, et al.