Tchaikovsky’s settings for the Orthodox Vigil service (which comprises Vespers followed by Matins and the First Hour in the Byzantine rite) are much less well known than his Liturgy, written in 1878. This is in part because the Liturgy caused a great scandal, being the first liturgical setting to be published without the authorisation of the ecclesiastical censor, and considered by many to be too inappropriately showy for use in services. Tchaikovsky himself, though his relationship with his Orthodox faith was ambiguous, took the task of writing sacred music very seriously indeed, and the Vigil service, written in in 1881-82, came about as an attempt to conform more to the spirit of the traditions of monophonic chant then beginning to be investigated in Russia.

It is intentionally not dramatic in the way the Liturgy is, following as it does the contours and modality of various kinds of Russian chant (the attentive listener will notice correspondences with Rachmaninov’s Vigil in this respect), but the work nevertheless contains some striking moments. Tchaikovsky’s setting of ‘Svete tikhi’ (‘Gladdening Light’) is from this point of view one of the highlights of the set, and the Latvian Radio Choir are alive to its every nuance, balancing a marvellous delicacy of sound against luminously energetic counterpoint. ‘Blagosloven yesi Gospodi’ similarly brings out the best from these singers, with its rapid oscillations between one dynamic and another, one speed and another – indeed, in this kind of writing one recognises clearly the skill of Tchaikovsky the orchestrator. The text- and chant-driven Great Doxology is something I would love to hear with much greater frequency in liturgical use; perhaps this recording will encourage choirs to take it up (though the composer does not spare the sopranos!).

Rounding off this recording is a miscellany of other choral pieces, of which the lovely A Legend (1883) is very likely to be familiar to Anglophone audiences, having found fame in an English-language adaptation as ‘The Crown of Roses’, though the dramatic setting of the paschal Zadostoynik Angel vopiyashe (1887) is chosen to end the disc in appropriately celebratory fashion. If I have a complaint about this disc, it is that it is somewhat short, but the quality of both singing and recording is superb.