Moscow, January 29, 2018
The concert will consist of works by Orthodox sacred choral works by composers who wrote outside the borders of their homeland. The majority of masterworks on this program will be sung in Russia for the first time reviving a repertoire not only neglected during the Soviet era, but even disparaged and publicly vilified. Bringing these works back to their homeland bears a deep symbolic as well as artistic significance.
The composers whose works will be featured on this program fall into three categories: those who began their musical careers before the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, and were forced to leave their homeland—Alexander Chesnokov, Alexander Gretchaninov, Andrei Ilyashenko, and Constantine Shvedov and Nicolai Tcherepnine; emigres whose compositional talents blossomed while already in exile—Mikhail Konstantinov, Boris Ledkovsky, and Alfred Swan; and three living composers born outside of Russia—Archpriest Sergei Glagolev, Archpriest Ivan Moody, and Kurt Sander (the latter two being converts to Orthodoxy) whose works were inspired and informed by the “New Direction” of the Russian Orthodox choral school.
From the beginning, this project has been a collaborative effort, bringing together the artistry of prominent church musicians and conductors with the latest in scholarly knowledge and research, both in the U. S. and Russia. The Kastalsky Male Chamber Choir will be expanded by 20 women’s voices to form a forty-voice professional mixed choir, which will be under the direction of Dr.Peter Jermihov, a prominent Russian-American conductor from Chicago. The male-chorus portion of the program—excerpts from Shvedov’s Liturgy, opus 40, will be directed by Prof. Alexei Rudnevsky, a member of the choral conducting faculty at the Moscow Conservatory.
When the decision was made at the Moscow Conservatory to mark the centennial of the 1917 revolution in an appropriately solemn and musically significant manner, they invited three consultants from the U.S.—descendants of Russian exiles who had devoted their careers and musicians and scholars to Russian Orthodox church music. Dr. Nicolas Schidlovsky (Ph.D., Princeton University), a noted scholar of medieval Orthodox chant, provided the concept and coordinated the planning and fundraising of the project; Dr. Vladimir Morosan (D.M.A., U of Illinois), founder of Musica Russica music publishers, and editor of the multi-volume series Monuments of Russian Sacred Music, assembled the program and provided the musical scores; and Dr.Peter Jermihov, a prominent Russian-American conductor from Chicago, will direct the forty-voice Kastalsky Chamber Choir—expanded for this occasion by the addition of 20 women’s voices; the male-chorus portion of the program—excerpts from Shvedov’s Liturgy, opus 40—will be directed by Prof. Alexei Rudnevsky, a member of the choral conducting faculty at the Moscow Conservatory. Their rare expertise, including knowledge of the history and extensive archival sources, has laid the groundwork for the evening’s program.
The great renaissance of Russian church singing and sacred composition, known as the “New Direction,” began in the final decades of the nineteenth century and continued through the first two decades of the twentieth until its suppression by the torrent of religious persecutions in the 1920s and thereafter. As this concert’s program demonstrates, the creative vitality of the “New Direction” survived over the course of the 20th century outside the Soviet Union, often serving as a conduit for stimulating interest in Orthodox Christianity in the West. Several prominent composers, including such figures as Sir John Tavener, Archpriest Ivan Moody, Maia Aprahamian, and Dr. Kurt Sander, became members of the Orthodox Church. In recent years, no fewer than five recordings of Orthodox music have either received or been nominated for Grammy Awards.
This project would not have been possible without financial support from a number of individuals and Orthodox parishes and church choirs throughout North America, Europe, and Australia, including St. Vladimir’s Seminary. The fundraising has been coordinated by the Russian Choral and Liturgical Music International Bulletin (RCLMI) and the Russian Orthodox Theological Fund (ROTF).
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The concert begins tonight at 7:00 PM in the Rachmaninoff Hall of the Moscow State Conservatory. Tickets can be purchased here.
