In Winnipeg, To sing Rachmaninoff’s Vespers

Last weekend I traveled with the Arrowhead Chorale to Winnipeg, Manitoba for a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers with the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir and The Winnipeg Singers (a professional chorale ensemble).

It meant getting up before sunrise to get on a bus as the sun was rising so that we could travel seven hours for a multi-hour joint rehearsal on Saturday.  It meant arriving back home at 3:00 a.m. Monday morning.  It meant several extra rehearsals to be prepared to sing for an hour in Russian in the weeks leading  up to the trip.

It was very much worth it.

The Vespers is my favorite piece of music.  Ever.  I heard it the first time on a recording when I was a teenager, and fell in love with it immediately.  I’ve listened to it my whole life.  I did most of my college homework with that music in my headphones helping me concentrate when I needed to block out other sounds.  The music is beautiful.  The text is beautiful.  I never thought I’d actually get to sing it, and when the opportunity presented itself, I was all in!

Before the trip we were all feeling a little concerned about our preparation.  We would be singing under the conductor of the Winnipeg choirs, and switching conductors is always a tricky thing for me.  There was a lot of Russian, and few of us have had very much experience singing in Russian.  The conductor of the Winnipeg choirs was born and  lived in Russia for a large portion of his life, so he was conducting in his mother tongue which gave him tremendous insight into the music, and we didn’t want to let him or anyone else down.

Our joint rehearsal went well, but wasn’t perfect.  Still I had a wonderful evening, staying at the home of one of the members of the Winnipeg Philharmonic.  She lived in a great big old house, and I love big, old houses.  She and her husband collected folk art, and it was such an interesting place to stay, so unlike my own crazy home.  Because they did not have kids, their home was pristine, and full of all sorts of amazing displays of artwork from all around the world.  I kind of felt like I was staying at a stellar bed and breakfast of some sort.  Their hospitality was absolutely amazing, and it was really fun to get to know them and another member of the Philharmonic choir.

Before the concert on Sunday we had a shorter rehearsal in the actual space that we were singing in.  The concert was in an enormous old church, with positively astounding acoustics.  The joined rehearsal went well, but the shorter rehearsal for the Arrowhead Chorale (we were singing a few pieces by ourselves in the first half of the concert, as was the Winnipeg Singers) was really catastrophic for a number of reasons.  We all felt terrible about it, and as minutes ticked by and the concert grew closer and closer, quite a number of us were feeling really very nervous.  Terrified might be a better word.  We wanted to sing well.  We wanted to do well for our conductor.  We didn’t want to face the embarrassment of not singing well in front of a large audience and two other choirs.

It was interesting, because the more nervous and terrified we got, the more disciplined we got.  We requested a short private rehearsal upstairs.  We took some initiative with some musical things that we might have lapsed on normally.  We were cohesive and focused, and took care to make sure we had a plan about all the transition details (where we were listening to the concert before our entrance, how we were going to walk in, etc.) and there was NO goofing around before this performance.  There wasn’t even much chatting.  In fact, while we were in a room backstage listening to the Winnipeg singers there wasn’t even any whispering.  Just listening. And when they finished their second song and there was applause, we snapped out of our seats into our formation quickly and silently without anyone even giving a cue.  It was discipline at it’s finest, and no one even planned it.

When we were onstage we sang better than we probably have all year, much to our relief!  But it was the second half of the concert where the magic happened.  Vespers is a magical, sacred piece of music.  Somehow everything clicked: the Russian, the notes, the expression, the focus, the conducting.  There were more than 1000 people in the audience.  The giant church was packed.  The stage was packed.  I was somehow sandwiched in between some amazing singers, with two altos from the Winnipeg Singers in front of me (I so didn’t want to make a mistake!) some baritones and basses from the Winnipeg Singers behind me, a very trained and lovely voice from the Winnipeg Singers on my left, and a fell0w Arrowhead Chorale member on my right.  It occurred to me about 1/3 of the way through the piece, that if I got to praise God like this in heaven for about 50,000 years, that would be pretty blissful.

It was so worth the trip.  By the end of the Vespers many people in the choir were moved to tears, and we were all walking on clouds after the performance, riding high!  We are all very excited to do it again this weekend, here in Duluth.

One of my favorite things about singing in a choir is getting to perform in all sorts of amazing churches.  This one was wonderful.  The pictures, taken quickly before I got on the bus to come home, do not do it justice.