Video. Slava vo Vyshnikh Bogu (Glory to God in the Highest!). Rakhmaninov/Paul Hillier

Thank you Mariusz for giving me the inspiration to create this video. You wished to have a version of this work done by a mixed chorus, so, here it is! This lady bows before the gentleman who gave her such a good idea! The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir is directed by Paul Hillier, and the iconography is from the Khram Spasa na Krovi (Church of our Saviour on the Spilt Blood) in St Petersburg. This magnificent church was built on the very spot of the assasination of Tsar Aleksandr Nikolaevich in 1881.

Vechnaya pamyat, rab bozhii Aleksandr.

BMD

Russkoye Pole (Russian Fields). Dmitri Khvorostovsky

The landscape art of the great Peredvizhniki painter Ivan Shiskin is joined with a Soviet popular song sung by Dmitri Khvorostovsky. The last image, Morning in the Pine Forest, is considered to be the finest Russian nature/landscape painting of all time. I agree, emphatically.

 

From Vladivostok to Brest, from Kotlas to Odesssa, many peoples, many voices, yet one homeland, one soul.

Idyot Tsaritsa Nebesnaya! (The Queen of Heaven Comes!)

This is an interesting combination. Russian icons of the Mother of God are paired with a Spanish male chorus singing a hymn to the Mother of God of one of the Hermandades (male lay brotherhoods). There is still a great deal of practise in the Roman church left over from pre-schism times. There is no identity between Catholic and Orthodox, but, we share common roots in the first millennium, which makes them the closest of any of the Western confessions.

Nikolai Sverchkov. Return from the Hunt

Return from the Hunt (Nikolai Sverchkov, no date (1870s-1880s?))

It appears as though the hunter returns not quite empty-handed (he did bag a rabbit, after all!). Hmm… he appears a little worse for wear… was there a little too much imbibing of the mousecatel at the lodge? Good thing the horse knows the way home (a penny for the poor beast’s thoughts!))!