SUNDAY MAY 22, 2022 @ 5PM

Musica Viva NY closes its 2021-2022 season with Rachmaninoff’s colossal All-Night Vigil for a cappella choir. To accompany it, Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez will be joined by pianist Margaret Kampmeier to perform Rachmaninoff’s thrilling Symphonic Dances in its version for two pianos, interspersed throughout the movements of the Vigil.

When Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year we asked ourselves whether we needed to cancel our performance?

After careful thought we have decided it should go on. Although Sergei Rachmaninoff loved Russia deeply, he left in December 1917, never to return. In 1943 he became a US citizen and he wrote his Symphonic Dances in New York, his home for the last 17 years of his life. The All-Night Vigil is written in Church Slavonic, the liturgical language common to the Ukrainian and the Russian Orthodox Churches. The texts of the All-Night Vigil, taken from the Old and New Testaments, are universal in the Christian world and antithetical to military violence, as is the music in its beauty and spirit.

We will begin our concert by performing “A Prayer for Ukraine” by Valentin Silvestrov. We stand with the people of Ukraine and all the voices that condemn the horrors of this war, and hope the music will bring comfort and solace to those who hear it.

1157 Lexington Avenue Map
212- 79-4 3646