With one of the greatest works of the choral repertoire Chorwerk Ruhr conducted by Florian Helgath will bring the Jugendstil Maschinenhalle at Zeche Zollern to resounding life. Where generators used to hum until the middle of the 20th century, there is now space for sound. With his at times powerful and then again delicate All-Night Vigil for mixed a cappella choir, Sergei Rachmaninoff, whose 150th anniversary is celebrated in 2023, recalls traditional Russian Orthodox church music. The central theme of the fifteen ancient Slavic sacred texts that he set in the All-Night Vigil is the Resurrection, the great mystery of Western Christian faith. The vigil, celebrated communally at the break of day, is taken from ascetic and early Christian prayers that were collected in preparation for major church feasts such as Easter and Christmas. These worshippers would remain awake all night in anticipation of Jesus Christ’s arrival in the form of beams of light, the new life, the morning glory. Rachmaninoff drew on old Russian, Greek and Ukrainian melodies and combined them with his own late Romantic sound language. A timeless whole that stretches from monophonic chants to six-part choruses of jubilation, a vocal event in Dortmund’s »cathedral of industrial culture«.

Produced by CHORWERK RUHR