Saturday 7 April 2012

Holy Week Part 4

The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday can often seem like a "dead space" between the important events in the Western Christian tradition, but in the Orthodox Church it marks the start of the All-Night Vigil which lasts through to the morning of Easter Sunday -- one of the central rituals of the church year.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s a dedicated research effort was underway in Moscow and St. Petersburg to recover the true and ancient traditions of Russian church music.  Almost every composer of substance in Russia composed music for the Russian Orthodox services, and a number of them made settings of the canticles of the All-Night Vigil.  Some were more successful than others. 

By general consent the greatest of all musical settings is that composed in 1915 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.  Although it is commonly known in English as the Rachmaninoff Vespers, it is correctly a setting of the complete All-Night Vigil (with the Vespers service forming only a part of the whole).  As required by church practice, Rachmaninoff used traditional chants as the basis of 9 numbers.  He then created what he called "conscious counterfeits" of the traditional chants as the basis of the remaining 6 pieces.  The 15 canticles, all sung unaccompanied, are full of soaring melodies, echoes, bell sonorities, richly harmonized chords, and deep bass lines that only a Russian choir can render with full justice.

This extraordinary and powerful music languished in obscurity through much of the Soviet era, due to the official atheistic policies of the Communist regime.  The first recording was not made until 1965!  And even then it was not publicly circulated within the Soviet empire, but was only available for musicologists to study.  It was not until 1973 that EMI Records made use of its marketing agreement with Melodiya to pry the recording loose and circulate it in the West.

I have a copy of that legendary premiere recording, and for me it still surpasses all of the numerous later efforts.  The RSFSR Academic Choir conducted by Alexander Sveshnikov was the lineal descendant of the old choir of the Imperial Chapel, and the Orthodox tradition was in their blood.  Not only that, but the alto and tenor soloists were both ideal -- Klara Korkan sounding like the very personification of Mother Russia.  The acoustic was rich and resonant without blurring the sound, and the intensity of the performance bore witness to the historic nature of the recording sessions.  However, unless and until the Sveshnikov performance is re-released, one must go with a substitute.  The recording by the St. Petersburg Cappella under Vladislav Chernuchenko on Chant du Monde is a good second-best -- again with the authentic sound of true Russian voices.

A few years earlier, another remarkable work of religious music was produced by Alexander Grechaninov.  The Seven Days of Passion is a setting of prayers drawn from throughout the Orthodox church rituals for the whole of Holy Week.  This is a must-listen for anyone who knows and loves the Rachmaninoff Vespers.  Again, all 13 movements are sung unaccompanied.  The musical language is similar, too -- even without the constraint of having to follow traditional chants, Grechaninov worked within the tradition.  The difference lies in the more dramatic approach that Grechaninov was able to take with what was designedly a concert work rather than a liturgy for church use.  Nowhere is this plainer than in the tolling bell-figures and ecstatic reiterations of "Alleluia, alleluia" which crown the final pages of the last movement.  What this composition shares with the Vespers is that extraordinary radiance or luminosity that causes the music to glow inwardly.

The premiere recording of The Seven Days of Passion had to wait until 1994!  Chandos Records captured the complete 60-minute span of the work during sessions in the Moscow Conservatory, with the Russian State Symphonic Cappella under the direction of Valery Polyansky.  This conductor and choir made a huge impression at the International Choral Festival in Toronto four years earlier with a complete performance of the Vespers, and this beautiful and moving recording fully confirms their ability to get right inside the music and realize its remarkably rich sonorities. 

These austerely beautiful pieces couldn't be more different from the music of the Western tradition that I've been discussing earlier in the week, but once you come to know them I think you'll find them impossible to put aside.

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