Having sung Brahms’s Requiem in his youth, first at the Glinka Choir and then at the St Petersburg Conservatoire Choir, Stanislav Kochanovsky realised that this work could be central to his career as a conductor. As a composer, the piece Brahms invested most effort to complete was A German Requiem, which he strove to finish after the death of his mother and his mentor Schumann, and which also catapulted his reputation to new heights. Requiem’s grandeur, in Kochanovsky’s personal vision, is summed up by three core concepts: faith, hope and love.