On Wednesday of Bright Week, a concert of the 24th Moscow Easter Festival took place at the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda museum-reserve. In the new season it continues to delight audiences with large-scale programs — the Symphonic, Bell-ringing and Choral programs; the latter this time featured 19 choirs.
We have been cooperating with the Festival for more than twenty years and are very proud of such a partnership. After all, thanks to it our fellow countrymen become acquainted with the work of the world's best sacred choirs. Over the years ensembles from Armenia, Bulgaria, the Baltic states, Serbia, Sweden, Belarus, etc. have performed here. Every concert is a supreme level of mastery! For us it is significant that this time the sticheras of Fyodor Khristianin, who taught the chant singers here in the oprichnina capital, were performed.
— shares Larisa Zaraiskaya, deputy director of the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda museum-reserve.
At the Museum of Ivan the Terrible the audience applauded the Male Old Believers' Choir 'Paraklit' from Rostov-on-Don. The vocal ensemble is engaged in studying, preserving and bringing to life forgotten chants and singing traditions of pre‑Petrine Rus'. In addition to independent scholarly work, the performers enlist musicologists and medievalists to decode 16th–17th-century manuscripts. Their work resonates strongly with the 'place of power' where the concert took place. After all, it was in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda under the first autocrat that a school of choral singing was opened, where the best chant singers Ivan Nos and Fyodor Khristianin (Krestyanin) worked. And it was Ivan the Terrible who initiated the spread of polyphony in Russian singing practice.
Choirmaster of the Male Choir 'Paraklit', Filipp Sevastyanov, says:
Today, under these vaults, the music sounded that is attributed to the second half of the 16th century. It was created with the direct support and patronage of the first Russian autocrat. Under him church singing was elevated to the state level. A choir of several hundred chant singers under the direction of Krestyanin took part in a vast number of events — from patriarchal receptions and receptions of foreign ambassadors to weddings. Today at the concert there was abundant sounding of four-voice demestvo, which formed the basis of such performances. In addition, our choir attempted to present the full diversity of the singing styles of that time — large and small znamenny, putevoy and demestvenny chants, as well as examples of early Russian polyphony: three-part singing and four-voice demestvo. And, of course, the unique in every sense sticheras of Fyodor Krestyanin, a Novgorod priest invited by the Tsar to create chants, were undoubtedly created within these walls. At the concert one of the richest of his melodies was performed — the first Gospel stichera 'Na goru uchenikom'. We are very grateful to the leadership of the Moscow Easter Festival and the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda museum-reserve for such a rare opportunity to perform here.
The program presented at the museum also included secular compositions, which elicited no less delight from the audience. After the concert spectators warmly thanked both the Choir and the museum staff for the emotions they were given befitting a truly Bright Easter.
By the way, anyone who couldn't get free tickets can, as usual, find an online broadcast of the concert on the museum's VK page.
