Rachmaninoff's Choral Masterpiece on the Quebec International Festival of Sacred Music.
The acclaimed Clarion Choir brings Sergei Rachmaninoff's (1873-1943) All-Night Vigil to the Quebec International Sacred Music Festival in Quebec City this September, and then gives two New York performances of the work at Trinity Wall Street as part of the Twelfth Night Festival. The All-Night Vigil is perhaps Sergei Rachmaninoff's greatest choral masterpiece, a lush and transcendent setting of traditional texts from the canonical hours of the Russian Orthodox Church. Written in 1915 for choir with alto and tenor soloists (here, Virginia Warnken and Oliver Mercer), its magnificent, soaring movements derive from ancient Kievan and Byzantine chants, many of which will be presented in this concert together with Rachmaninoff's settings.