Listen to one of the most devastating climaxes in Russian music

10 April 2017, 12:08

VOCES8 will take to one of London's finest Baroque churches as part of St John's Smith Square's Holy Week Festival 2017.

British chamber choir VOCES8 are firm Classic FM favourites thanks to their sonorous sound and beautiful vocals, always choosing exquisite pieces, both old and new.

Surprise surprise, they've done it again with this performance of Rachmaninov's Bogoroditse Devo from his All-Night Vigil. It's a belter of a work in the Russian Orthodox choral style, full of drama and Rachmaninov's signature emotion and compositional inventiveness. The Bogoroditse Devo features one of the great climaxes in choral music, as the parts build to an ecstatic outpouring at "yáko Spása rodilá yesí dush náshikh" ("for you have borne the Savior of our souls)".

Here's VOCES8:

You can hear the choir sing more rich, evocative choral music at St John's Smith Square's Holy Week Festival 2017, including Jonathan Dove's The Passing of the Year - details here.