Rachmaninov's Vespers
7th November 2009
St Barnabas' Cathedral, Derby Road, Nottingham
8.00p.m.
All-Night Vigil, Op 37 by Sergei Rachmaninov
Directed by Richard Roddis
Rachmaninov wrote the music for the Russian Orthodox All-Night Vigil in 1915, in the historic moments before the Russian Revolution - which led to the suppression of the Orthodox faith. Somehow this unique work reaches both backwards over a thousand years of culture and faith, and forwards over the subsequent bleak spiritual landscape. It does this by two means: firstly by constructing the music rigorously on the building-blocks of ancient Slavonic chant, and, secondly, by investing it with a hugely powerful spiritual passion.
It has been written that "no composition represents the end of an era so clearly as this liturgical work". Some consider it to have been his finest work, and it was indeed one of the composer's two favourites.
The work is in fifteen sections, written in the Russian liturgical style for unaccompanied choir, complete with very deep basses. The first six sections set texts from the Russian Orthodox 'Vespers', from which the work derives its usual name.
The great challenge to Western choirs is to master the Slavonic text and to recreate something of the rich choral sound of this tradition, which together convey the essence of this deeply expressive work.
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