Sergei Rachmaninov - All-Night Vigil (Vespers)

The composer's love of the music and rituals of the Orthodox Church were distilled in this masterpiece; Daniel Jaffé finds the best recording

-  Daniel Jaffé

The work

World War I had been raging for less than a year when Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil was premiered on 23 March 1915 (or 10 March, according to the pre-Revolutionary Russian calendar). The all-male voice Moscow Synodal Choir, presenting a charity concert in aid of the war wounded, had been given special permission to perform the work in Moscow's Great Hall of the Noble Assembly. With nationalist feelings running high and the public's appetite for Orthodox Church music growing, Rachmaninov's a cappella masterpiece was a hit; within a month, the choir gave four further performances. As Rachmaninov confessed some years afterwards, the Synodal Choir's performance 'gave me an hour of the happiest satisfaction... the magnificent Synodical singers produced any effect I had imagined, and even surpassed at times the ideal tone-picture I had had in my mind when composing this work.