A night of Russian spirituality from the BBC Singers and cellist Abel Selaocoe, with Gubaidulina’s Canticle of the Sun and Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil.

Rachmaninov’s magnificent setting of texts from the All Night Vigil ceremony has been described as the ‘greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox church’.  The concert begins with the BBC Singers joined by charismatic South African cellist Abel Selaocoe for Gubaidulina’s radiantly mystical Canticle of the Sun, her setting of St Francis’s prayer to the natural world, a paen to creation, written for Mstislav Rostropovich.