Title: While combing your hair
Instrumentation: for mixed choir
Year: 2021
Duration: c. 6’30”
First performer: Netherlands Radio Choir, conductor Peter Dijkstra
Premiere: October 8th 2021 in the AVROTROS Friday concert on NPO Radio 4
Commissioner: AVROTROS for the Netherlands Radio Choir conducted by Peter Dijkstra
Buy Score: Donemus
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“While combing your hair”
dedicated to Maria Kalesnikava
Wake up from your dream and look up straight to the sea.
Would you be silent, if its color turned suddenly red?
And from the emerald sky hundreds of various animals will start to fall down.
Will you believe the rainbow’s still near,
when at night the seagulls start screaming above all flooded market places,
will you take the hairbrush and start combing your dazzlingly stunning white hair?
The sound of the broken mirrors will freeze in the air:
thousands of silent shards!
And you will see lonely boats in quiet lakes
with faces of fish:
praying, trembling and crying in primeval fear.
Let your hand shield your blue eyes
so darkness will be
like blood in a world out of golden salt.
Stay in silence,
and lift up your sorrowful,
exhausted face to the Sun.
Then flocks of birds will descend to every home,
people will hear them sing in their backyards.
And smiles will suddenly cover their frightened
yet trustful and beautiful souls.
Maxim Shalygin
