Rachmaninov: All Night Vigil
Greyfriars Kirk 5/3/26
RSNO Chorus
Stephen Doughty (conductor)
Having missed the perhaps slightly controversial RSNO concert last Friday, I was looking forward to a quite different experience on Friday night this week. The orchestra is otherwise engaged for a few weeks, and so it was the turn of the RSNO Chorus to strut its stuff a cappella on Friday (and on Saturday in St Aloysius’ Church in Glasgow) in a performance of Rachmaninov’s sumptuous setting of the Russian Orthodox All Night Vigil. Often referred to as the Rachmaninov Vespers, it is actually a compilation of texts from both the Vespers and Matins, although the name, All Night Vigil, is slightly scary, reviving memories of the Taverner piece last year at the Edinburgh International Festival, lasting several hours! Rachmaninov’s work lasts only just over an hour, but packs a vast amount of sonority and harmonic genius into that short period, covering 15 sections of luscious Russian music, sung by a chorus unaided by instrumental accompaniment.
I have been a fan of this piece ever since I heard it nearly 50 years ago in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. It was sung by an exceptional London amateur choir, augmented by some Russian exiles from the Soviet Union. We were thrilled at the time, when, just before the conductor appeared, a line of tall, bearded Orthodox priests or monks filed on stage and formed the front row! They were there because Rachmaninov famously wrote a score with a wide range of notes, in particular a part for low basses, often taking his singers down to bottom C and memorably, to bottom B Flat! Now, I had a fine career as an operatic bass, but never was asked to sing below a bottom E in public and could not get near some of the low notes in the All Night Vigil. Indeed the programme in Greyfriars specifically credited two ‘Octavists’, singers whose sole purpose was to sing those almost impossibly deep rumblings. Take a bow, Joshua McCullough and Alex White!
Greyfriars Kirk is the perfect venue for big a cappella music (a cappella meaning sung music without instrumental accompaniment), and the RSNO Chorus certainly filled the vaults with marvellous singing. Trained and conducted by Stephen Doughty, the chorus was largely on superb form, and produced singing of spine-tingling excitement. It’s not easy to sing in Russian, although the vowel sounds are remarkably clear and bright, but the chorus seemed exemplary in their pronunciation, and sang with fervour and animation through a vast range of tessitura and dynamics. Only the occasional tonal slip occurred, and was quickly covered up.
My only caveat was the use of soloists from the choir during the work. I was quite happy with the soloists who started the chants of most sections, as they would have been sung by Orthodox priests, like Jewish Cantors or Church of England Precentors. However, on occasions throughout the Vigil, Rachmaninov wrote expansive solo sections, primarily for mezzo soprano and tenor, and these really need trained professional operatic voices, ideally with a Slavic quality in the voice. These solos need to soar over the rest of the chorus, taking the listener to heights of emotion or fervour which enhance the overall effect of the words and music. I attach no blame of any sort to the various singers who were asked to perform these solos in Greyfriars, but in a context such as this, we needed trained operatic voices for these sections. They are not extensive, and I can understand the rationale behind using choristers, but I did feel we were somewhat short changed on Friday.
Having said that, it was a pleasure to hear the RSNO Chorus in full voice in some of the big parts of the piece, raising the roof at times, with all sections showing both fortissimo bravado and subtle pianissimo. Rachmaninov wrote the Vigil in a white heat over only two weeks, and it was first performed in Moscow in March 1915, partially in aid of the Russian war effort in the First World War. Sung by the Moscow Synodal Choir, an all male group using boy sopranos and young altos, founded in 1721, it was an immediate success, and indeed the composer judged it to be one of his finest creations. It’s odd now to think of it sung by boys, as the high parts seem utterly suited to big female voices, and it’s also hard to credit that only two years later, Russia was thrown into existential turmoil with the Bolshevik Revolution. The Royal Family was murdered and Rachmaninov himself, realising that he, as an aristocrat, was in danger, left the country for a concert tour of Scandinavia with his family. He never returned and soon went into exile in America, deeply homesick, but understanding that he could not go home.
This performance in Greyfriars was very fine, and the full house was warm in its applause. Stephen Doughty shaped and paced the work very well, and his choir responded splendidly. It’s not a piece that is often performed in Edinburgh, and people had turned out in large numbers to see and hear it.
