Siberian-born Vissarion Shebalin (1902 1963) is best known for his instrumental music, which includes five symphonies and nine string quartets. Some of these have been heard on CD, but this is the first recording of the eight delightful, and very Russian, choral cycles he wrote from 1949. Shebalin had to endure much hardship; along with friend & colleague Shostakovich he was one of the composers condemned in the infamous 1948 Party congress in Moscow, and in later life he fought to overcome a series of crippling strokes.However, he faced these tribulations with understated but unshakable optimism, as these touching choruses reveal.