Serge RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943)
All-Night Vigil Op.37 (1915) [75:34]
Julia Scozzafava (mezzo), Frank Fleschner (tenor), Bryan Taylor, Paul
Davidson, Toby Vaughn Kidd, Joseph Warner (bass),
Phoenix Chorale, Kansas City Chorale/ Charles Bruffy
rec. Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle, Kansas City, Kansas, USA, 24-26
May 2014
CHANDOS CHSA5148 SACD [75:34]
What a glorious work the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil is. Even
today, with many versions of this major composition - and its companion
piece the Liturgy St. John Chrysostom - in the catalogue - it
languishes in relative anonymity for the wider listening public. Yet it was
written at the height of Rachmaninoff's pre-Revolutionary powers in
1915, book-ended by the 2nd Sonata and the set of Op.39 Etude Tableaux. To
quote the excellent liner this work - "stands as the crowning
achievement of the Golden Age of Russian Orthodox sacred choral music".
This Golden Age lasted from 1880 until the 1917 Revolution and inspired many
well-known composers to produce works in the idiom from Tchaikovsky to
Rimsky-Korsakov and Tcherepnin.
For all these composers, including Rachmaninoff, mining the ancient
resources of Russian sacred unison chants, was another way of establishing a
unique National musical identity. Of the fifteen movements that comprise
this work, ten draw on pre-existing ancient chants whilst the remaining five
are wholly original compositions. Rachmaninoff's particular skill is
to blur the definition between these differing sections giving the whole
work an extraordinary sense of organic unity. Indeed there are several
aspects of the aesthetic of this genre of music that chime particularly
closely with Rachmaninoff. Clearly his wider and enduring fame rests on his
compositions for and involving piano but it is very important to acknowledge
that an abiding influence and stimulus throughout his musical life was
orthodox chant. His Symphony No.1 can almost be considered a study in the
symphonic potential of chants. Jump forward to his last orchestral work the
Symphonic Dances and, lo and behold, aside from the oft-noticed Dies
Irae the closing pages of that great work makes extended use of the
chant used by Rachmaninoff in the ninth movement of these Vespers. Likewise,
his lyrical preference for stepwise melody is wholly in tune with orthodox
chant.
This performance on Chandos is given by the combined forces of the Phoenix
Chorale and the Kansas City Chorale under the direction of Charles Bruffy.
Quite simply, this is some of the most remarkably refined and technically
stunning choral singing I have ever heard. The choir is not overly large;
fifty-six voices split 12 sopranos, 13 altos, 15 tenors and 16 basses but it
is large enough for this level of all but perfect ensemble, intonation and
balance to be staggeringly impressive. Another feature of this
choir's singing is the control they exhibit across their entire
dynamic range. They can sing a superbly poised pianissimo but then produce a
crescendo to a stunning wall of fortissimo sound without any hardening of
tone or loss of internal balance. I was struck by the similarity to the
effect an organ achieves as its swell box opens. I cannot think of any other
choir I have heard who are able to execute this with such impeccable
results. Indeed, such is the level of refinement that it could be argued
that the resulting sound is almost inhuman in its purity and sophistication.
Add to that a vocal trick of phased breathing - which means an unbroken flow
of the musical line - and the sense of other-worldly bliss is complete. The
result is a sense of ecstatic rolling musical lines. However, it is
important to note that this is just one - albeit hugely impressive -
approach to this masterly work. By emphasising the mellifluous qualities in
the music and concentrating on removing any sense of the individual from the
choral group there is a degree of dehumanising of the music.
This is strikingly apparent if direct comparison is made with any of the
several East European sourced performances - Wikipedia lists over thirty
recordings having been made in the last fifty years. The ones I had to hand
are the well-regarded Phillips recording from the St.Petersburg Chamber
Choir and Nikolai Korniev which features mezzo Olga Brodina and tenor
Vladimir Moztowoy in the small but important solo vocal roles, and the
National Academic Choir of Ukraine 'Dumka' under Yevhan
Savchuk on Brilliant Classics. This former recording was made in an
atmospherically vast acoustic particularly and points up the interpretative
extremes. There is a supplicatory urgency about the St Petersburg
performance - look no further than the opening movement; 1:57 in St.
Petersburg and all of 3:27 in Kansas - with Slavic vibrato firmly to the
fore that stamps this Decca version as firmly Russian in origin. Worth
noting that the Kansas performance - alone amongst the versions I have
access to - prefaces the opening movement with an introduction sung by the
celebrants; the deacon and the priest. This accounts for the first 55
seconds - but Bruffy expands the movement proper by a good half minute in
comparison to Korniev.
I know it is a dull cliché to mention the Slavonic character of an Eastern
European choir or soloist but there is a very specific timbre and style of
singing that means it is both a cliché and true. Another well
commented on characteristic are the low-lying bass lines. In the famous
fifth movement - in the Western Liturgy the Nunc Dimittis - Rachmaninoff
requires the bass voices to descend to a B flat over two octaves below
middle C. This is a moment of pure liturgical theatre and it has to be said
that in fact the Kansas basses are even more resonant than their Russian
counterparts. When making my comparisons I was not a little surprised to
realise that the Ukrainian performance on Brilliant transposes this movement
up. I have no idea if there is any composer-authorised performance practice
which sanctions this but it does seem rather contrary to the dramatic effect
Rachmaninoff was after. This was the movement that he requested be performed
at his funeral.
The approaches are so fundamentally different as to almost preclude
comparisons - I genuinely enjoy both and feel that each throws a contrasting
but valid light on the work. The Russian performance underlines the concept
of the work as an active part of the church's liturgy and the
interaction between Man and his God, an ongoing, very human dialogue if you
will. The Kansas performance strikes me as more of an aid to personal
meditation - there is a transcendent rapture caught here that is truly
remarkable and utterly beautiful. Bruffy and his Kansas City Chorale
recorded the other great Rachmaninoff liturgical work - the Liturgy St.
John Chrysostom - for Nimbus getting on for a decade ago (review). Admirers of that impressive performance
will certainly want to acquire this one which I think represents an even
finer achievement and certainly a progression towards their stated goal of
being "the preeminent model for American Choral music by redefining
standards of musical excellence".
Bruffy's soloists are drawn from the choir and are predictably
fine. The recording venue of the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle in
Kansas City is suitably resonantly appropriate. The choir is recorded quite
closely but with the cathedral's generous acoustic providing them
with a halo of pleasing warmth. I was not able to listen to this disc in its
SACD format. Even in standard CD the engineering is very fine indeed but I
can imagine this being even more impressive in the higher-resolution form.
The liner provides Chandos' standard tri-lingual format with
interesting and detailed essays on the historical and stylistic context of
the work and the work itself by Vladimir Morosan. What Morosan fails to
examine at all is the place of the work in the context of
Rachmaninoff's output which I feel is a significant omission.
Apparently it was his favourite work along the choral symphony The
Bells Op.35 and the significance of these sung chants for a nominally
keyboard-orientated composer cannot be underestimated. One other curiosity
regarding the liner; full texts are supplied but in the original Cyrillic
text with an English translation only. There is no transliterated version
which to someone such as myself who cannot read Cyrillic makes the English
version alone nearly pointless when trying to follow the performance.
Any admirers of this composer who do not know this work should make a
point of hearing it simply because the music it contains runs as a spine
through his entire composing life. Admirers of the art of choral singing
should hear this disc for the astonishing brilliance of its execution.
Not the only way of performing this music for sure, but a magnificent
achievement.
Nick Barnard
Previous review:
John Quinn (Recording of the Month)
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