Kristina Vårlid's new album 5 Stages of Grief is a moving tribute to the bright Serbian guitarist Sabrina Vlaškalić, who tragically passed away at the young age of 29.

As a former student and close friend, Vårlid channeled her grief into this powerful collection of pieces that explore the emotional journey of loss through music. Drawing on the rich traditions of classical guitar, the album features works by renowned composers such as Štěpán Rak, Nikita Koshkin, Toru Takemitsu, Pēteris Vasks, and Georg Schmitz, each capturing a unique perspective on the grieving process.

5 Stages of Grief is based on the five-stages process theory, whereby the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance frame a mental structure that teaches one to live with the loss. It is a formal model present in the numerous funeral odes and marches, as well as in the baroque tombeaus and Romantic elegies. It is within that classical tradition that Czech composer/guitarist Štěpán Rak (b. 1945) wrote Tombeau for Sabrina as soon as he had received the tragic news. In what is essentially an elegiac song grown out of an arpeggio accompaniment, Rak reaches a melodic and dramatic peak, only to subside in a downward chromatic motion. Tombeau is typical of Rak's unbuttoned emotional directness.

Nikita Koshkin's (b. 1956) Sonata no.2 is a considerably more melodic work. The first movement is argumentative and compact, the second draws on the topics of loneliness and emptiness and the third is a threatening, sinister play of persecution. One could hardly imagine two composers as dissimilar as Koshkin and the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996). Where Koshkin is angular, dramatic, relentless, and pounding, Takemitsu's music is about giving time to time, waiting for rounded gestures to blossom from and into silence. In the Woods is a subtle and meditative piece and was Takemitsu's final work, written when he was in hospital.

The Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946) wrote the Sonata of Loneliness in 1990. In this work all three movements have a severe and anguished aspect: the first, Pensieroso, relies in a sparse alternation of material; the second, Risoluto, is a toccata where a relentless flux of semiquavers is alternated with chromatic chord sequences, which finally take over to a conclusion; the last movement is the spiritual core of the piece, where a long melody with folk overtones is punctuated by a dirge-like chorale; these reminiscences of church chorales invest the piece with a deeply sorrowful and immemorial character.

The German composer and guitarist Georg Schmitz's (b. 1958) Last Encores, premiered in 2009, has become his best-known guitar work. Each of the four movements could lead an independent life, as the title suggests, as a display piece, but the intimacy, introspection and resignation are retained by the darkly rich sonority in each one.