Rachmaninoff: Divine Liturgy Reviews Are In!

Thanks to all who made it out to the concerts this weekend! The reviews are in:

From The Oregonian:

“Friday night’s performance of the Divine Liturgy at St. Mary’s Cathedral was indeed drenched in sumptuous sonic pleasure.

“It was a marathon for the singers, a vast text amounting to nearly 18 program pages of Old Church Slavonic, each page turn rustling through the audience. Blend and balance remained fine from beginning to end, however, and the pace was unforced but unflagging.

“the sensual appeal was inescapable, and it carried through the evening with crystal clarity, gentle cadences and phrases as natural as breath.” — James McQuillen, The Oregonian

Read the full review on www.oregonlive.com

From Oregon Music News:

“The goal of this music, it seeems, would be to strip away the barrier between belief and disbelief; that is to say it feels as though the music is designed to be the flesh that animates the dry bones of the liturgical text. The words become flesh, the ideas spirit, and they are thus animated through the vehicle of the music. If this is indeed the point, then Cappella Romana succeeded in a way that is hard to describe.

“[Adam] Steele did an incredible job in making the rich, ancient phonemes of the Old Church Slavonic come alive. His was the most difficult task of the evening, yet he sang with a real feel for the cadence of the language, rendering both beautiful and gentle this difficult, consonant-rich tongue.

“Truly a Slavophile’s delight, Alexander Lingas’ group has once again shown that not only do they know exactly what they are doing, but they do it with such style, grace and consummate skill that it is difficult to imagine it being any better.” — Lorin Wilkerson, Oregon Music News

Read the full review on www.oregonmusicnews.com