October 16, 2009
In the Dark of the Night Before the Brightest Dawn of ALL . . . So Far . . .
[Gentle Warning: there are long Russian names above and below.]
My friend Ellen sang Rachmaninov's Vespers in Moscow with the Kennedy Center Choral Arts Society. At the time Mstislav Rostropovich, affectionately known as Slava, was the Musical Director at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. I was blessed that she gave me a copy of the CD.
Ellen has an incredibly beautiful voice and I also have been blessed to be her friend since the days I was the Sunday School Superintendent at my home church in Washington. We often sang a hymn together based on Psalm 91 at the women's retreats . . . and at the healing ministry retreats on the banks of an inlet of the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay at a mansion converted to a Methodist retreat center if you can believe that.
Sadly, the last time I was in Moscow in the spring of 2007, Slava Rostropovich had just died.
It was also the week that Pope John Paul II was entombed under the altar at St. Peter's in Rome, and former Russian President Yeltsin was laid to rest.
Both Rostropovich and Yeltsin have graves in the Novodevichi Cemetery behind the western walls of a monastery by the same name in Moscow about three blocks from the Bogoslovsky Eurasian United Methodist Seminary . . . across the Moscow River from the hill on which Moscow State University presides, and not far from the sports complexes built for the Moscow Olympics.
A few days before I left Moscow, I saw the new graves replete with flowers when I was there with my new friend Vera who is one of the Bishop's assistants, though I had wandered around the outside of the monastery complex with another new friend who was teaching a course on the Old Testament at the Bogoslovsky Eurasian United Methodist Seminary there. (This was April/May of 2007)
[As a bizarre God-incidence, at one point Vera and I figured out that I had met her twin sister on the day of the first anniversary of my ordination as a pastor when Vera's twin sister, her husband, their son, and one of Vera's sons were in Washington. Imagine that!]
Anyway . . . the Novodevichi Monastery Cemetery is the most honored resting place for Russian and other kinds of heroes of the Russian Empire and the former Soviet Union, and my friend Slava Bogoslovsky's parents' graves are there, too.
I knew that particular Slava in Champaign-Urbana in the late 70s when he was a Soviet exchange professor during the days of Detente.
The last time I saw him was in Moscow, in the summer of 1994, sixteen years after we met in Illinois. While on my first Volunteer in Mission trip -- the first time I was ever in Russia (January, 1994) we had visited Novodevichi.
My Slava (the professor Bogoslovsky, not the musical director Rostropovich) told me that his Dad was with Lenin in the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution, and that his grandfather was the priest at the little white church along the Moscow River kitty-corner east and south of the marvelously extravagant St. Basil's Cathedral and the Christ Tower of the Kremlin with the clocks and bells.
[Attached is a photo of the Christ Tower and the Kremlin Wall from a place not far from Bogoslovsky's grandfather's church taken by me in the midst of one long summer midnight in Moscow.]
There is some Balalaika folk music you have no doubt heard even if you don't recognize it called "Midnights in Moscow" about the wonderful summer twilights.
(I may have mentioned that already sometime when I told you about the trip to Obninsk.)
But back to Rachmaninov's music and the Choral Society . . . a friend I grew up with met Slava Rostropovich not long before he passed away -- at Tolstoy's estate, Yasnaya Polyana, I think she said.
I'm sure you will be glad to know that I'm not going to go on and on about this as I keep the Saturday night before the Resurrection vigil.
[I wrote that before I remembered a few other stories . . . please excuse me. . . .]
You can hear the music several places online . . . www.pandora.com, perhaps.
There are also some links to websites below if you want to know more about Rostropovich.
Not trying to sell you anything, I trust you know . . .!
Just want to share something mystical and wonderful and the music that belongs to it.
Sooooo . . . later in that month I was in Moscow in 2007, I went to a recital given by the Rachmaninov Society in an apartment in Moscow not far from where the elite Soviet leaders had lived.
I'm pretty sure I told you about it already . . . please excuse me for being redundant.
The music was lovely at the recital. It was performed by some recent graduates of fine arts institutions, and there was a little museum display about Rachmaninov in the hallway of the apartment. They had copies of CDs of Rachmaninov's music, and I asked the attendant why the Vespers by the Choral Arts Society wasn't there. She said they had never heard of it, so I told her she could look it up online.
Oh.
So, also . . .that reminds me that when I was in college in the early 1970s, a music professor became enamored of Russian music and started both a Balalaika Orchestra and a Russian Choir.
I joined the Russian Choir and it was very wonderful -- mystical acapella music as haunting . . . and inspiring . . . as any angels could possibly sing, I think.
Then later when I got back from Moscow in the late spring of 2007, the ladies of my home church in northern Georgia wanted to get together with the folks at St. Mary's of Egypt Russian Orthodox Church in our neighborhood. So, I contacted their priest and the ladies went over when there was a church bazaar there and they got a tour of the sanctuary. We invited them to come to one of our Methodist Ice Cream Socials, but I am not sure if any of them were able to come.
While setting up the meeting as I was asked to do by one of the ladies of our church, I met with the Russian Orthodox priest in person.
Strangely enough as he and I were talking . . . and when he motioned to the place in the sanctuary where their choir stood to sing, I told him the story of my Russian Choir experience in the early 70s at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.
Then things became a bit surreal to me because it turned out that the priest had been in Moscow the same time I was in the spring of 2007. The Russian Orthodox Churches that had split at the time of the Oktobrist Revolution -- and at other times . . . reunited at the rebuilt Church of the Savior near the Kremlin and there were big celebrations he attended.
The priest then asked me if I knew anything about what had happened to my Russian Choir director from all those years and miles ago.
I replied that I had heard nothing about him for years.
And things got a bit mystical . . .again . . .!
What I remember the priest explaining to me was that the daughter of the music professor married a man who became a Russian Orthodox priest.
After retiring the professor lived with her family.
Although the music professor had been some kind of agnostic or atheist most of his life as many people I knew in academia were in those hippie days, the priest said that one morning at his daughter's house the music professor woke up just absolutely sure of his belief in God in Christ.
You can't make this stuff up.
[Or I guess you could, but no one would probably believe it anyway.]
Those kinds of stories from my life with connections over years and years and miles and miles kind of remind me of the Glenn Miller classic big band jazz piece called "String of Pearls".
Why don't you listen and see if you don't agree, if you have the inclination?
http://www.ilike.com/artist/Glenn+Miller/track/String+Of+Pearls
May the shadows flee and the light come brightly into your heart whenever you are in the need of it . . . and always.
Blessings in All Grace, Love and Joy -- Kathy
Other online References:
http://www.fanfaire.com/rost/index.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000005E68/iconsnstuff/
Kathleen Ware Harris © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment