Glorious Russian Mass in Oakland Sanctuary
On Saturday, April 24, ninety voices filled the sanctuary of Oakland’s newly built Christ the Light Cathedral by Lake Merritt. The Pacific Boychoir, a world-renowned choir that makes its home in Berkeley, is also celebrating their recent Grammy for Best Choral Performance, a product of their collaboration with the SF Symphony in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8.
Three years ago choral director Kevin Fox decided to recreate Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil, augmenting his youthful academy with adult tenors and basses for a sound that is rarely heard. Written in 1915, it was a crowning achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church in the last days of Czarist Russia, gaining great popularity before the Russian Revolution of 1917, when all religious music was banned.
Rachmaninoff wrote it for an all-male choir, but it is rarely performed that way because of the demanding boy alto solos. These days that part is more often sung by women altos or countertenors. Additionally, the punishingly low basses are hard to find—at the end of the fifth movement they descend to an unheard of B flat. Kevin Fox scoured the Bay Area for tenors and basso profundos to augment his academy, which supplied the boy soprano and alto parts, replicating Rachmaninoff’s original vision.
The All Night Vigil, more commonly called his Vespers, was staged again last weekend at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral April 23 to commemorate the Polish and Russians who perished in the recent airplane crash, and was attended there by the Russian and Polish Consuls General.
The next evening’s concert in the East Bay was the first time that the Pacific Boychoir had performed at the Cathedral of Christ the Light, and they had only a brief rehearsal to explore the peculiarities of the sound and staging. The very high lenticular space echoes and re-echoes the sound and can muddy all but the purest tones. But those tones were pure, joining their own echoes in gentle decays. Tenor soloist Fernando Tarango added an exquisite vocal line to the chorus, and acoustical mysteries circled it around the periphery of the space for an ancient sound that was as intimate as it was compelling.
Their concert began with another luminous piece, John Tavener’s Song for Athene. This lovely work combines Shakespearean text with a bass drone on low F to provide an authentic Greek Orthodox feeling, and is widely popular after being chosen for the funeral mass of Princess Diana.
A bass note floated in the wide-bellied space; then tenors feathered in with “Alleluia,” slowly rising and falling. Singing from the back of the hall, their harmonies surrounded us, and many in the audience closed their eyes to lose themselves in the sound. Sourceless, it could have welled up from within.
After, they funneled down the aisles and took their places at the front. I was further back, but when their voices soared in the vaulted space it made no difference.
Bass and then tenor prepared that space and the boys entered, matching a heavenly chorus. In the second movement, Blagosloví (Благослови), Rachmaninoff returned to a Greek chant. Three boy altos sang the blessing, clear and penetrating over a fog of deep basses. Among many beautiful moments the sixth movement emerged. Bogoróditse (Богородице Дево, радуйся), the blessing of Mary, had a wealth of modal harmonies. In the following Sláva (Шестопсалмие), “Ghóspodi” (My Lord) was simply haunting. The vaulted hall worked its magic as they coasted to a pianissimo chord.
We are fortunate indeed to have the Pacific Boychoir in our backyard.
—Adam Broner