RainShadow Chorale offers ‘All Night Vigil’

Leader staff
Posted 10/30/24

The RainShadow Chorale is offering Olympic Peninsula audiences their first opportunity to hear Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “All Night Vigil,” during the first weekend in November.

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RainShadow Chorale offers ‘All Night Vigil’

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The RainShadow Chorale is offering Olympic Peninsula audiences their first opportunity to hear Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “All Night Vigil,” during the first weekend in November.

Bev Schaaf, administrative manager of the RainShadow Chorale, explained that two performances, on Saturday, Nov. 2, and Sunday, Nov. 3, will showcase the 15-movement work, that’s set to be sung with minimal accompaniment.

Schaaf added that RainShadow Chorale Artistic Director Laurie de Leonne, now in her third year, has challenged the singers with this program, following her own first exposure to it as a child.

“I heard my mother’s choir sing it at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and fell in love with it,” de Leonne said. “It’s a privilege for me to be able to conduct it with RainShadow.”

In proposing “All Night Vigil,” de Leonne made the case that this is music that choirs across the world aspire to perform, because it requires technical skill, stamina and faith that all its seemingly disparate parts will come together to express Rachmaninoff’s reverence for Russian sacred music, as well as his modern compositional style.

“The work’s beauty lies in its simplicity and directness, yet it is also harmonically rich and texturally complex,” de Leonne said.  “Many have regarded it as Rachmaninoff’s finest choral work, and one of the greatest choral compositions of all time.” 

“Preparation for this concert is intense and challenging on several levels,” said RainShadow Board President Rebecca Nerison.

The texts of the 15 parts of the ritual are in Old Church Slavonic, a language spoken only in Orthodox Church services, and Schaaf noted the vocal demands, especially for low basses, are extreme.

To help singers master the language, de Leonne sought the coaching help of Nina Noble, a native Russian speaker and member of St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church in Port Townsend.

De Leonne deemed “All Night Vigil” to be “a late great work of the Russian nationalistic tradition,” due to it “combining ancient chants and new composition, in a form that blends with the older melodies.”

Rachmaninoff wrote the piece in 1915, during the first months of World War I, just prior to the Russian Revolution.

As such, de Leonne pointed out that “classical music is music that is removed from its original use.  Were it not for classical music, this piece might not have survived, through the long years of Soviet repression of sacred music.”

De Leonne elaborated that such a vigil is meant to observe a specific time period, so during a performance, the audience and singers should feel that sense of time, and feel changed by it.

“As one is immersed in the ethereal melodies and Old Slavonic language, a transcendence of place and time occurs, which is truly magical,” Nerison said.

The two concerts begin with three more contemporary pieces in English, which observe secular Russian culture.

Performances start at 4 p.m. on both days at the First Presbyterian Church, at 1111 Franklin St. in Port Townsend.

Tickets are available at the door, at a suggested donation of $20 per adult and $10 per student.