Listening to the St. Petersburg Men’s Ensemble on Sunday afternoon I was transported to the first time that I heard — really and truly heard—everything that is holy about holy music. Three years ago, I decided to spend Christmas in Nuremberg. I was studying abroad on a scholarship and had heard they had a charming Weihnachtsmarkt and enough WWII history to fill four days, which struck me as a winning combination at the time.
Mostly, I remember being cold. But on Christmas Eve, I stumbled into the Frauenkirche outside of the main market, drawn by a velvety, layered sound coming from its bowels. Beneath the church’s towering arches, a cluster of singers gathered shoulder-to-shoulder, their music washing over a small congregation that had gathered in the pews for a nighttime service. The lyrics, a mix of German and Latin inflected with deep emotion as they ricocheted off the cool stone walls, engulfed me completely.
Sunday evening, around 70 New Haveners were transported to a similar place by members of the St. Petersburg Men’s Ensemble, who performed in Bethesda Lutheran Church on Whitney Avenue. As they sang a mix of sacred and secular music for the second winter season in a row, the group transformed the twentieth-century building into an older place of worship, wide-berthed enough to hold the melodies of several centuries past.
Take Nikolay Kendrov’s “Our Father” (video above). As the ensemble neared the end of the melodious prayer, their eyes turned heavenward, bodies rocking forward, half in holy meditation, half in musical passion. Andrei Volikov, the youngest member of the group and a student of both music and musical theater, drew one hand toward the roof of the church, summoning some spirit as he reached for a few notes at the top of his register.
Or the more upbeat “Barynya” (video below), an old folk song often accompanied by fervid dancing and traditional Russian squatwork. While members of the ensemble did not quite get into frenetic knee-bending by the end of the song, they came close, drawing the audience in as they sang.
And that’s the thing about sacred music, as well as strains of old folk. They aren’t sexy or young, but they were never meant to be. Their dynamism runs much deeper. When Volikov sang from “Monotonously Rings the Little Bell,” a piece that puts music to a poem that was found beside a frozen stagecoach driver, the scene materialized for the audience: the small journal, lying just a tad open by the driver’s blue-tipped fingers, the snow and ice gathering at his feet in the Siberian winter. The group’s rendition of “Kalinka,” a hymn to a pre-Christian goddess, had the audience clapping along as members of the group slapped their hands madly to the melody.
“They invest a lot of emotional power in it, so you can’t help but be moved. And they sing it with soul,” said Bethesda’s music director, Lars Gjerde. “We do some Russian music with the choirs that I direct too, and it’s lovely, it’s such wonderful writing, it’s inspiring, but they have a cultural understanding of it that’s deeper than what we have.”
After the concert, congregants, music enthusiasts, and ensemble members mingled in the small hallway outside. Friends laughed, remarked on the music, and recounted their Thanksgiving dinners, milling around a table of sweets that included leftover slices of pumpkin pie. Some bought small Russian goods: miniature farmhouses painted red, small spoons, ceramic blue and white bells. Gjerde geared up for the next musical event, a performance of Amahl and the Night Visitors that is now exactly two weeks away.
A breeze blew off Whitney Avenue. It was surprisingly warm, and filled with the sweetest music.
Donations from this concert went to ESMS, also known as the Immanuel Baptist Shelter. The next event in the Bethesda Music Series will beAmahl and the Night Visitors, December 14 at 7 p.m. To find out more about the Bethesda Music Series or to get involved, visit their Facebook page.
