Rêves de Renouveau

Rachmaninoff and the Poets of the Silver Age

Cathedral Concert Series

Ten Rachmaninoff romances, then the First Piano Sonata

Concert · April 19, 2026 · 6:30 PM

Saints Peter & Paul Orthodox Cathedral, 109 Grand Street, Jersey City, NJ 07302

$65

Ten of Rachmaninoff's romances, set to poets of the Russian Silver Age, and then the First Piano Sonata alone after the interval. The songs run from Vocalise, which has no words at all, to Spring Waters, which is nearly all words and arrives like the thaw it describes. Raymon Godfrey Geis sang, with Gleb Ivanov at the piano.

Christ Is Risen, Op. 26 No. 6, sits near the middle of the set. It takes a poem of Merezhkovsky that puts the Paschal greeting against the state of the world and asks what Christ would find if He came back to it now. That is not a comfortable thing to hear inside a church, and the song is the better for it.

The First Sonata closes the evening. Rachmaninoff wrote it with Faust in mind and then took the program note away, so it is left to stand as music.

After the music

A reception dinner followed in the parish hall, included in the price of the ticket. That has been the shape of every concert in the series: the musicians stay, and the conversation runs long.

Program

Taking part

Raymon Godfrey Geis, tenor

Gleb Ivanov, piano

Artistic Director of the Concert Series

Gleb Ivanov directs the cathedral concert series. He came to America from the Moscow Conservatory, won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 2005, and builds each season around music the room itself suits.

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