Budapesti Tomkins Énekegyüttes / BTF 2018

Rachmaninoff: All-Night Vigil, Op. 37

Artistic director: János Dobra

The Budapest Tomkins Vocal Ensemble was founded in 1978. Most of its members had studied at the Liszt Academy, as had their artistic director, János Dobra. The ensemble was the first in Hungary to maintain a formerly little known repertoire, which may include sung chamber music by any important composer, from the 16th century to the present.

In 1987 Tomkins Ensemble was responsible for the Hungarian premiere of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, which they went on to record almost twenty years later. The work includes the opening prayers of the Eastern Orthodox church’s night offices, the vespers, and the last ones, the orthros.

In part, the piece “owes its heady splendour to the Russian chants used in it, as well as to the sensuous beauty of the Kiev and Greek style liturgical melodies,” wrote a reviewer of Tomkins Ensemble’s record.