Georgy Sviridov (1915–98) has been hailed as the most important composer of choral music of the 20th c. He saw himself as part of the thousand-year continuum of Russian culture, giving its resonance full expression in the monumental choral cycle Hymns and Prayers, written 1987-97; he completed it only weeks before he died. Extraordinarily beautiful and profoundly moving, Hymns and Prayers is perhaps the most important Russian choral composition since the liturgies of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. The Credo Chamber Choir, based in Kyiv, Ukraine, was founded in April 2002.
