A fine introduction for the uninitiated

A concert entitled Masterworks of the Slavic Christian Liturgy might seem like pretty esoteric fare, but when you open the program and see names such as Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, you can feel assured of a congenial bridge into the unknown.

Not that the unknown here holds any terrors for the uninitiated. Laurence Ewashko led the Cantata Singers last night in a wonderful array of this repertoire, which, it’s safe to say, is quite unfamiliar to most of us. It’s all of relatively recent provenance, which doubtless surprised some people. The first substantial composer of post-chant Russian sacred music was Dmitri Bortniansky, who was born just before Mozart and died just before Beethoven.

The two hymns of this Saturday’s program, while undeniably beautiful, don’t have anything distinctively Russian about them. One does begin to hear what most of us would recognize as a Slavic flavour in the work of Glinka, who was also the father of Russian opera and, from the next generation, Grigor Lvovsky. Tchaikovsky, of course, we recognize as Russian, but the distinctive sound of Slavic church music doesn’t emerge until late in the 19th century and its masters, including Rachmaninov and Chesnokov, lived into the 20th.

Conductor Ewashko was raised as a Ukrainian Christian, so it’s not surprising that he has a feel for the music. The choir sang beautifully, hardly news these past few seasons. If there was one thing missing, it was the solidity of the deep Russian basses we hear on recordings. Nevertheless, the evening was a complete pleasure. The music was all of high quality, sometimes very high, and a fine introduction to a corner of the repertoire that would probably reward further exploration well.