Over All the Mountain Tops is Peace

The poem „Over All the Mountain Tops is Peace“ by Goethe as well as Lermontov’s »Горныевершины» rank among the most well-known and popular verses of German and Russian poetry. The number of settings of these famous verses is large – there are ca. 90 versions of “Over All the Mountain Tops” (among others by Liszt, Loewe, Reger, Schumann, Charles Ives), and ca. 20 songs and choruses on “Gornye vershiny” (among others by Rubinstein, Taneyev, Swiridow). In addition we have 7 settings alone for mixed choir by Valentin Silvestrov, composed between 2007 and 2012, as an expression of his deep devotion to the classical Russian poetry. Later, Silvestrov grouped the 7 versions into a cycle that is supposed to be performed as a whole (all 7 choruses), of which the present chorus is only a preliminary publication.