Choir takes on dark sonics of Rachmaninoff

> BY ALEXANDER VARTY

It’s getting to be a familiar story: a powerful authority figure has been seen colluding with Russians, and now it seems that one of those Slavs is dead. On the other hand, it’s not like Sergei Rachmaninoff died prematurely, of some untraceable poison; he passed away just shy of 70, in 1943, and as of yet none of Stalin’s agents have been implicated in the chronically ill composer’s demise.

It’s also arguable that Rachmaninoff is not dead at all, a point Jon Washburn is getting ready to make when he leads the Vancouver Chamber Choir, with guests the Vancouver Cantata Singers, through the aristocratic Russian’s choral masterpiece, Vespers.

Rachmaninoff’s take on Russian Orthodox liturgical music is generally considered to be one of the most demanding, and most rewarding, works in the 20th-century choral repertoire. To present it properly, Washburn is aiming to draw a truly Slavic tone out of the two choirs, something he says is nearly impossible to achieve in North America.

“I have a certain sound in mind— a darker sound,” the conductor explains, reached at home in Mount Pleasant. “You know, the voices are darker over there, and especially for the Russian choirs there’s a tradition of being bottom-heavy, of having a lot of bass sounds. And they really like the vodka sounds: you know, the really boisterous basses. I think our performance is going to replicate that pretty well. We don’t have any of those incredibly freakish bass voices, but we have several guys who can make a big sound down there. So I’m saying it’s going to be good.”

Russian Orthodox hymnody isn’t the only sonic style to take advantage of low-frequency vibrations; think of the giant ritual trumpets of Tibetan Buddhist music, or the deep synth pulsations of Detroit house. But in writing Vespers Rachmaninoff made particularly good use of Orthodox chant while also incorporating his own, more densely harmonized innovations. “It’s the kind of music that can really get to you,” Washburn says. “It’s very moving, and a lot of the time that’s because of the sonority. It seems like weighty thoughts.”

Balancing Rachmaninoff’s intellectual heft on the VCC program will be Washburn’s own arrangement of Gabriel Fauré’s Messe Basse, and American composer Morten Lauridsen’s comparatively ethereal Lux aeterna, itself a late-20th-century classic. For the latter, Washburn and company will be aided by the Pacifica Singers, in another nod to the cooperative depth of the local choral scene. The conductor points out that, this year alone, his ensemble has also worked with the Vancouver Youth Choir, musica intima, and the Elektra Women’s Choir.

“I think there’s a lot of good feeling in the choral community these days,” he notes, and any observer of that world would add that there’s much talent, too.

The Vancouver Chamber Choir joins the Vancouver Cantata Singers and the Pacifica Singers at the Orpheum on Friday (March 30).