Christmas Eve of the Russian Orthodox Church (January 6) is traditionally celebrated with the Christmas Vigil (vsenoschnoye bdeniye), a Vespers service lasting hours with much singing and illuminated processions. The present recording contains chants from the Christmas Vigil and works by Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian composers, performed by the eminent Don Cossacks Choir under the direction of Marcel Verhoeff.

The rich and emotional music of the Russian Orthodox Church is seldom heard in the Western world, making this treasure an even greater enhancement to the spectrum of the Edition. No western and few Russian ensembles can communicate the Orthodox liturgy as convincingly as the legitimate successors to Serge Jaroff's legendary Don Cossacks Choir. Rarely to be found on a west European release, the compositions especially selected for the liturgically conceived Musica Sacra reveal a surprising new insight into the high art of sacred Russian music and tradition.

The Christmas concert, with Russian and German Christmas carols, was recorded in one of Germany's most beautiful Baroque churches. In addition to the well known sacred songs such as 'In dulci jubilo' and Russian pieces like 'Gospodie Pomuli', Wanja Hlibka delved deeply into the ways of both cultures. The a cappella version of 'Es ist ein Ros entspungen', for example, enchanted the 1700 concert goers with the Kosaken's Russian melancholy..... a moving and grandiose experience. The church's interior, when one considers the basilica's dimensions, presents a challenge to a vocal ensemble. With a depth of over eighty meters, it requires the vocal power of the Russian operatic soloists comprising Wanja Hlibka's choir to elicit the necessary charisma from the vocally sophisticated arrangements and to captivate the audience in the way that they did. The atmosphere of the concert, dependent on the desired expression and dynamic, ranges from a peaceful, quiet, almost gentle honoring of the child in the manger to an enormous room-filling song of praise proclaiming the joy at the birth of the Redeemer.

Listen to Neude Freude Ist Uber Uns Gekommen in RealAudio.

After the devastating defeat of the Cossacks by the Red Army in 1917, many of the surviving Cossacks ended up in the Diaspora. In 1921, in an internment camp near Constantinople, Serge Jaroff set about forming a choir. Little did he, or anyone, foresee that the choir that was formed in the cholera-infested camp would become a major international musical fixture. A complicated period saw Jaroff 's choir move to the Greek island of Lemnos, and later to Sofia where they performed in the city's cathedral. After that, money troubles saw the choir trapped in Vienna, and it was the League of Nations that eventually helped them out, putting them in touch with a concert agent in Vienna. From then on they rocketed to stardom, giving over 10,000 concerts. Nicolai Gedda was a regular performer with the choir. Jaroff 's concerts consisted of church music, followed in the second half by songs. That is the programme on these two CDs Ð traditional Russian Orthodox liturgy in settings by Tchaikovsky, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Bortnyansky and achmaninoff, followed by traditional songs. Also on this collection is the much less well-known female choir that Jaroff established, and their recordings are a comparative rarity.