Rachmaninov
All-Night Vigil
PaTRAM Institute Male Choir/Ekaterina Antonenko
Chandos CHSA 5349 (CD/SACD, 2 discs) 70:13 mins
Deep bass notes are one of the most striking features of Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil, and a pianissimo scale down to a bottom B flat led the conductor of the first performance to ask, ‘Where in the world will you find such basses? They are as rare as asparagus at Christmas.’ Rachmaninov replied that he knew his Russian peasants. Choral basses have doubtless cursed him ever since.
In this new recording from the Patriarch Tikhon Russian-American Music Institute (PaTRAM), a group dedicated to the promotion of Russian Orthodox liturgical singing, male vocal timbres both low and high are celebrated in a special arrangement for tenors and basses. Preserving Rachmaninov’s harmonies and textures as far as possible means that all singers are pushed to the extremes of their range. There are some jaw-dropping bass sonorities here, but the overall impression is far from sombre: indeed, what is most surprising is the sense of lightness and tenderness that emerges from using high male voices.
Recorded in the resonant acoustic of the Russian Orthodox Convent Monastery Church of the Ascension, located in a tranquil position on the Mount of Olives, this is a performance of deep spiritual meaning. Never hurried, conductor Ekaterina Antonenko pays painstaking attention to dynamic detail and carefully shaped phrases. In a work that poses significant demands for singers, nothing here is laboured. Control, smoothness and serenity are the most fitting words to describe a performance in which all singers, soloists and choristers alike, exhibit an astonishing mastery of vocal legato. A familiar work is reinvented with gorgeous results. Alexandra Wilson
