haiku review: rachmaninoff's vespers @ st. ignatius loyola

Last month I heard the Uppsala Akademiska Kammarkor perform Rachmaninoff's Vespers at the super swanky St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Ave. Actually the proper English title these days is "All Night Vigil," but I prefer the quiet, meditative connotation that 'vespers' has, and it's very true to the piece. Plus all night vigil makes it sound dauntingly long, which the piece is not.

In any case, the Swedes were great, it was a lovely performance, and at the outset the conductor remarked that it was very New York for a Methodist choir to perform a Russian Orthodox work in a Catholic church.

Respectfully, that's nothing. My freshman year at Columbia, I went to hear the Dalai Lama speak at St. John the Divine, where as part of the event a group of Tibetan monks performed a chant in honor of Rosh Hashana. Now that's New York.

Anyway. The Rachmaninoff.

Harsh High Slavonic,
Transformed to angel's voices
Music-alchemy