Programme
Rachmaninov : All Night Vigil
Vsenoshchnoe Bdenie Op 37 ('Vespers')

Performers
Tatiana Zheranzhe (alto)
Victor Radkevich (tenor)
USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir
Valery Polyansky (conductor)

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) wrote some of the finest Orthodox church music of modern times. But, after he left Russia in 1917, he never again set his native language to music because he thought no one would appreciate the meaning. In the Orthodox Church, it is said that the mind should enter the heart and there is no better illustration of the meaning of this phrase than Rachmaninov's sublime sacred work, the All-Night Vigil, sung here in the original language by one of Russia's leading choirs.

Although generally known as Vespers in English, Rachmaninov's greatest contribution to the history of Russian sacred music is, in fact, a setting of Vespers, Matins and the First Hour as they are celebrated in the Russian Orthodox Church and known as the All-Night Vigil.

When the Vigil was completed - in two weeks during January and February of 1915, while Rachmaninov was touring Russia with Sergei Koussevitzky, giving concerts to support the war effort - what emerged was the culmination of a long tradition of Russian church music and, in particular, of the development of 'choral orchestration', something with which a number of composers connected with the Moscow Synodal School, such as Katalsky and Chesnokov, had been concerned. Rachmaninov, however, outstripped them all in the enormous range of colour he summoned from the choir and also in the frequency with which he employed 'divisi' passages in all the voices. The choral writing is truly of a virtuoso character, but all these technical devices are employed in the service of liturgical expression.

Rachmaninov dedicated the Vigil to the memory of the respected theorist and scholar Stephan Vasilevich Smolensky (1849-1909), who had been responsible for introducing Rachmaninov to the sacred repertoire at the Moscow Conservatory. The first performance was given on 10 Mar 1915 by the Moscow Synodal Choir, under the direction of Nicolai Danilin, and was extremely well received by both public and critics. It had to be repeated four times during that concert season, such was the demand to hear it again.

The work is in 15 sections, built on chant from the various repertoires of the Russian tradition. Even when not founded on actual chant, the characteristics of Rachmaninov's own melodies are profoundly imbued with the spirit and style of chant, creating what he himself referred to as a "conscious counterfeit of the ritual". Rachmaninov had a special affection for the fifth number of the Vigil, the Song of Simeon (Nunc dimittis) and recounted how he had played through the score to Katalsky and Danilin: "Towards the end, there is a passage sung by the basses - a scale descending to the lowest B flat in a very slow pianissimo. As I played this passage, Danilin shook his head and said 'Where on earth are we going to find such basses? They are as rare as asparagus at Christmas.' Of course, he did find them. I knew the voices of my countrymen and well knew what demands I could make of Russian basses!". The composer wanted this piece sung at his funeral, though this proved impossible in the event.