PORT TOWNSEND — RainShadow Chorale will perform Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “All Night Vigil” at 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
The chorale’s fall concerts will be at First Presbyterian Church, 1111 Franklin St., Port Townsend.
Tickets are available at the door for $20 per person, $10 for students.
Rachmaninoff wrote the piece in 1915 in the first months of World War I just prior to the Russian Revolution.
“Preparation for this concert is intense and challenging on several levels,” said Rebecca Nerison, RainShadow Chorale’s board president.
The hourlong work is unaccompanied and the texts of the 15 parts of the ritual are in Old Church Slavonic, a language spoken only in Orthodox Church services, and the vocal demands are extreme, especially for low basses.
“Combining ancient chants and new composition in a form that blends with the older melodies, this is a late great work of the Russian nationalistic tradition,” said Laurie de Leonne, the chorale’s artistic director. “Classical music is music that is removed from its original use. Were it not for classical music, this piece might not have survived.”
The concerts will begin with three more contemporary pieces in English, which are written in the tradition of looking back at Russian culture.
For more information, visit www.rainshadow chorale.org.
