RACHMANINOFF: The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 31 – Kārlis Rūtentāls, tenor / Gundrars Dziļums, bass /Latvian Radio Choir / Sigvards Kļava – Ondine

by | Jun 26, 2010 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews | 0 comments

RACHMANINOFF: The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 31 – Kārlis Rūtentāls, tenor / Gundrars Dziļums, bass /Latvian Radio Choir / Sigvards Klava – Ondine multichannel SACD ODE 1151-5, 59:06 [Distr. By Naxos] ****:

Like Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff may not have been especially devout, but he had warm feelings about the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church, even if he didn’t frequent its places of worship. So like Tchaikovsky, he felt moved to create a musical setting of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the most important Orthodox liturgy, more or less equivalent to the Latin Mass. And just as Tchaikovsky did when his work was premiered in 1880, Rachmaninoff raised the hackles of Church authorities who forbade further performances of the composer’s “modernistic” music in connection with services.

Rachmaninoff didn’t press the issue, and his setting was all but forgotten. Then in the 1980s the score was recreated from surviving part books and performed for the first time in more than sixty years. Since then, it has been much recorded, so this new version by the Latvian Radio Choir enters a crowded field.
As with Tchaikovsky’s beautiful Divine Liturgy, it’s hard for us to understand the objections of the Church hierarchy to Rachmaninoff’s work. Its spirit is quietly reverential, it’s rhythmically staid, it’s hardly daring harmonically, and it is prevailingly lovely. If the work seems almost uneventful, that’s the upshot of Rachmaninoff’s good intentions. He wanted to create a setting that was true to the ancient traditions of the Orthodox Church, not a work that celebrated the composer as much as God, as to our everlasting benefit seems the case with the great Classicists working in the Austro-Hungarian Empire—Mozart, Haydn, Hummel, and Beethoven. Doubly ironic, then, that the Church hierarchy proved so inflexible about Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy.

That said, if you’re new to Rachmaninoff’s choral works and want to investigate his sacred music, the All-Night Vigil with its breathtaking, nearly symphonic sweep is the place to start. Written five years after the Divine Liturgy, it was intended for concert performance, hence its very different character. If you’re already an initiate, however, the Liturgy has beauties of its own to share even if it often seems almost static. The first hint of jubilation doesn’t come until the “Cherubic Hymn,” the seventh number, nearly twenty minutes into the piece. On the other hand, as the notes to the present recording make clear, Rachmaninoff was not overly constrained by his sense of reverence; he managed to put his own mark on the choral writing, dividing his choral forces or assigning solos in ways that were not traditional. One creative high point is a remarkable low note sustained by the basses at the end of the Credo section, a loooow B-flat that sounds for all the world like the throat singing of Tibetan monks.

This performance includes the traditional exclamations of the Celebrant (Kārlis Rūtentāls) and Deacon (Gundrars Dziļums) and so is more complete than some recordings of the work, although each conductor chooses which sections of the piece, as it would be performed in church services, to include or not. The Latvian Radio Choir sing with the kind of hushed reverence and understanding one would expect, given Latvia’s connections with Russia and the Orthodox Church. It also sings with a sound that is distinctly “right,” as well as with great technical polish. This is a performance I can recommend confidently in spite of the competition.

A decided plus is the multichannel recording, which truthfully captures the vast, reverberant spaces of the (Lutheran) Dome Cathedral in Riga. The reverberation adds some sibilance to the voices, which might prove rough on the ears at higher listening levels, but it’s a striking sonic experience in any event.

– Lee Passarella

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