The power and ethereal beauty of the unaccompanied Russian choral sound are on full display in two masterpieces of 20th-century choral music. Alfred Schnittke’s Choir concerto is an expressive and complex work in four movements, setting the Russian translation of a series of “sorrowful psalms” by medieval Armenian saint Grigor Narekatsi. Sergei Rachmaninoff intended his Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom for church performance, but Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities objected to its “spirit of modernism” and refused to sanction it. We will perform excerpts of this gorgeous work.

​Read the program notes.