Rodion Shchedrin is a rather enigmatic composer who has been creating music for many years (he was born in 1932), often at odds with the once-Soviet authorities. His early years featured a prominent religious upbringing, as his father was a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, no easy task for someone unwilling to cooperate with the authorities. Shchedrin initially tried to slip his work called Russian Liturgy into the mix for the 1988 celebrations of the 100 years of Christianization in Russia, and even in that hotly imbued age of Prestroika, he found the going quite difficult. So instead he resorted to Shostakovich-like trickery (by that time an art form in the Soviet Union) and gave the work the name The Stamped Angel after a book by Nikolai Leskow, the subject of which has nothing to do with the score at all.
The nine movements certainly sound like Russian liturgical music for the most part, the choral passagework using the tried and true techniques of many noted composers of the last century who led a renaissance of sorts. The texts employed are taken from the Orthodox liturgical books for the most part, and the psalms, the former rearranged only slightly. Three soloists and two boys are also used, a bit of a departure from the Orthodox tradition, but not as much as the use of a flute, stated in the notes as a departure from Orthodoxy and a harkening back to Russia’s pre-Christian roots. Why a composer would wish to do this in a piece as profoundly faith-driven as this one is beyond me, and I have to take exception with those comments, as the flute is usually used to portray the shepherds in this work, not in a liturgical manner. Also, this work is not strictly speaking a liturgy at all, as it does not follow any standard liturgical structures of the Orthodox Church. Instrumental music is not allowed in the Orthodox Church not because it would cause a “backlash to paganism” as the notes say, but instead from an ancient tradition that indicated only the human voice was worthy to sing praises to God. This is an ancient tradition dating back some 1600 years, not since the Christianization of Russia, as the notes falsely state.
Shchedrin is also taking a stab at the state by making references to the work of Leskow, who writes of a group of Orthodox believers persecuted by the authorities, even though the composer makes no use of any text from the book itself. But despite the many felicities of the work, much of it is too derivative of standard Russian-sounding liturgical music, and the work is devoid of the melodic and authentic passions of a composer like Arvo Part. Nevertheless, many will find it rewarding in its static musings on the liturgical content, though the piece is somewhat vapid in dramatic thrust and content. Shchedrin knows of what he speaks and writes, and for that alone he must be taken seriously. The SACD sound is top notch, spacious and resonant, while the Berlin Radio Choir has enjoyed vast experience with this sort of new music, and they sing accordingly.
— Steven Ritter
