Rehearsals yesterday evening for our Christmas with the Phil concert on 15th December and the Amnesty International Concert on 19th January went extremely well. It was especially  good to revisit the glorious Rachmaninoff “Bogoroditse Devo” which we will be singing in December. This wonderfully uplifting and stirring prayer to the Virgin Mary is part of the “All Night Vigil” which was premiered in March 1915 in Moscow, partly to aid the Russian war effort. It is particularly appropriate that we are performing this piece in the year which sees the 100th Anniversary of Armistice Day and the end of the Great War.