tones
Tones deaf
..or, more correctly, the All-Night Easter Vigil. I see someone nice has put the whole of the greatest of all versions, that made in the 1960s by Alexander Sveschnikov and the RSFSR Academy Choir, on YouTube:
Russian Orthodox music is all a cappella choral, the lightness of sopranos pitted against the rumbling depth of basses. In the Nunc Dimittis (the song of Simeon, starting at 17:33), the basses descend to an astonishing low B flat, which causes standing waves in the floor. The Ave Maria that follows it is toe-curlingly gorgeous. In fact, the whole thing is brilliant, and considering that many of these people were good card-carrying Party members at the time, sung with such fervour that one realises that the soul of old Russia never really died.
I really that this is very different from the usual stuff that one finds in the music room, but it's worth a listen. Personally, I've never heard any recording with so much "soul", no matter how you interpret that word.
Russian Orthodox music is all a cappella choral, the lightness of sopranos pitted against the rumbling depth of basses. In the Nunc Dimittis (the song of Simeon, starting at 17:33), the basses descend to an astonishing low B flat, which causes standing waves in the floor. The Ave Maria that follows it is toe-curlingly gorgeous. In fact, the whole thing is brilliant, and considering that many of these people were good card-carrying Party members at the time, sung with such fervour that one realises that the soul of old Russia never really died.
I really that this is very different from the usual stuff that one finds in the music room, but it's worth a listen. Personally, I've never heard any recording with so much "soul", no matter how you interpret that word.
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