Upcoming Events
Announcing VAE’s annual summer concert!
Sunday, June 22, 4 pm
Duke University Chapel
Admission free; 1 hour
Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil
(Vsénoshchnoye bdéniye)
sung in Church Slavonic
Rachmaninoff’s beloved unaccompanied All-Night Vigil from 1915 has been called “the greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church.” Inspired to create a work that recovered the true spirit of Orthodox services, Rachmaninoff chose traditional chant melodies in several different styles and enveloped them in wondrously rich harmonies. The work’s 15 movements show a broad variety of complexity and texture, each one bringing to eloquent expression all the drama and nuance inherent in these treasured texts.
We hope that you will come to hear our 36-voice choir perform this sublime music and to experience its transcendent beauty in the incomparable acoustical setting of Duke Chapel!
Some rare and intensely beautiful fare that was almost without exception profoundly inspiring and moving, particularly given the magnificence of the singing… We may never take this art for granted, so it’s worthwhile reflecting on how much work goes into it… so what one remembers is the sheer beauty as each of the individual pieces unfold… so pure, so refined was the singing
About VAE
YouTube Channel
Visit the VAE’s YouTube channel to see professionally recorded past live performances, including the 25th Anniversary Concert in Duke Chapel and the 2021 Holiday Concert at First Presbyterian Church.