Rachmaninov All-Night Vigil
13/6/26 Church of the Sacred Heart Edinburgh
Scottish Chamber Choir Ian McLarty (Conductor)
This was the second performance of Rachmaninov’s masterpiece, All-Night Vigil, that I have heard this season, and was possibly the best I have ever heard. The Scottish Chamber Choir (not the SCO Chorus – a completely different entity) has been in existence since 1968, and since that time, it has established itself as one of the top choirs in Scotland. With approximately 30 singers, it puts on a series of concerts each year, both a cappella and accompanied, and for 10 years has been conducted by the talented Ian McLarty.
In the slightly fantastical setting of the Church of the Sacred Heart in Lauriston Street (one feels like one has been transported to an Italian baroque church), the SCC gave a magnificent reading of Rachmaninov’s great work. Written in something of a frenzy over two weeks in 1915, when Russia was at war with Germany and the Ottoman Empire, and only two years before Rachmaninov was forced to flee his native land in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, the work is a very personal reaction to the world around Rachmaninov at the time, and a distillation of memories of his childhood with the sights, sounds and smells of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The All-Night Vigil has been preserved virtually unchanged since the 11th century, a series of psalms, readings, prayers, processions and blessings, which includes vespers (movements 1-6), matins (movements 7-12) followed by 2 hymns and ending with a hymn from the service of Prime. For many years, the work was known as Rachmaninov’s Vespers but we know now that the vespers section counts for less than half of the whole piece. It is sung in Old Church Slavonic, an early sacred Russian, and the SCC had done an enormous amount of work to learn how to pronounce it. Now, I know a bit of Russian, having sung in that language many times in my career, but my grasp of Old Slavonic is limited. However, it sounded jolly good to me!
From the very beginning, it was clear that the choir was brilliantly trained, and it produced a fabulously thrilling sound which at times threatened to blow the roof off the ornate church where we were sitting. Ian McLarty boasts a very decent CV and it was clear that he was completely in control of the dynamics and the ebbs and flows of this extraordinary work. From contemplation, through dramatic narratives to fervent joy, the All-Night Vigil is a microcosm of religious belief, and although Rachmaninov was not apparently a particularly devout man, he was well-attuned to the history and emotional content of the Russian Orthodox religion. Totally unaware that in a couple of years he would flee Russia never to return, this work fixes him fully in the tradition of Russian sacred music.
Making use of every possible note available to the human voice, from high sopranos and tenors to the deepest of basses, the Vigil resonates superbly, and in the glorious acoustic of the Sacred Heart church, it sounded absolutely fantastic. The choir possesses a few true basso profundo singers and the experience of hearing the frequent low notes (right down to bottom B flat) throughout the piece was thrilling.
There are two solo parts in the texture of the Vigil, an alto and a tenor, and in the more extended and exposed tenor line, we were lucky that the choir could use the services of Mike Towers. Mr Towers has been a stalwart on the Edinburgh amateur music scene for many years, and he shows no diminution in his powers. His easy tenor floated superbly over the choir texture, producing just the right Slavonic sound to tingle the spine!
All in all, this was an exceptional performance of a great piece, and Edinburgh audiences have been lucky to hear it twice this season. Readers in Linlithgow and West Lothian, and the Central Belt generally, should make a note in their diaries for next Sunday, 21st June, as the SCC will perform the All-Night Vigil again in St Michael’s Parish Church in Linlithgow at 4pm.
Not to be missed!