2023 sees the 150th anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninov; January means Orthodox Christmas and then New Year, which fall a little later than their counterparts in the Gregorian calendar. Tenebrae, conducted by their founder Nigel Short, marked both anniversary and changing of the season with a performance of the All Night Vigil at St Martin-in-the-Fields. It is a work often referred to as the Vespers, though in fact is liturgically more wide-ranging than the evening service.
Its fifteen movements draw on the plainchant traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church; the multi-part divisions often called for create the impression of great, thick clouds of perfumed incense, mysteriously and enticingly occluding the holy office it adjoins; at other moments there are great shafts of choral light that are like sunlight striking great gold mosaics and piercing the fug; there are also tender solos for alto and tenor that offer a charismatic, cinematic close up in the great choral vista.
Rachmaninov liked the piece so much he wanted it sung at his funeral; he reused material from the 1915 piece in the finale of his sharp-elbowed modernist-inflected Symphonic Dances from 1940. The gorgeous half-light of the piece reflects its place in the Russian choral tradition – the pinnacle of a cappella All-Night Vigil pieces (following Tchaikovsky’s underrated version) written just before the revolution and a cultural crackdown, which would put that tradition in abeyance. It is both tribute and elegy; Rachmaninov would soon go into exile.
One innovation in Tenebrae’s performance came at the start. They began the piece halfway down the aisle, with bass Owain Park intoning the plainchant at the rear of the church. The rest of the choir filed down to the platform, leaving Park and a quartet of men to call us to prayer – “Come, let us worship” – before slowly making their way to the front. It was a simple but elegant gesture that not only created a sense of ritual magic – Tenebrae have often explored more theatrical presentations of music in their programmes – but also allowed the audience a look under the acoustic and musical bonnet; this is a work that can often be too exalted and radiant, echoing exquisitely in a sort of celestial bathroom. Up close we heard a little more grain in their bracing, rhythmic take on it, and a more human reckoning with these divine texts.
Textbook consort singing followed, all moodily lit by candles. The more animated, scherzo-like run of movements of movements eight through ten had plenty of consonant pop. A trademark gesture was Short’s secco endings, which retain the energy of the sound right until the final moment, and suggest the sudden and mysterious vanishing of what was manifest. Singing from the tenors, solo and tutti, was ardent and creamy by turns, and some of the finest of the evening.
When choirs get the basso profondo sound Rachmaninov uses – those extreme sports low notes – then the piece feels truly cosmic. Happily the bottom B-flat that concludes the Nunc dimittis had a sumptuous darkness, achieved wholly, as one conductor I know puts it, “without burping”, sounding like infinity rather than an unblocked drain. Tenebrae showed an especially fine ability to achieve expressive ends through shading dynamics but also texture: a full, rich, homophonic sound at a climax would start to thin, vibrato vanishing, into something more spare and transparent. Musical and emotional alchemy, right in front of our eyes and ears.
