"although the best-known Rachmaninov works are not uncharacteristic, they represent only one side of his musical personality. Some of his finest scores have nothing to do with the piano, or the orchestra, and ranking high among them are his two major religious pieces, the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, and the Vespers... The culmination of 100 years of effort by Russian composers to fuse liturgical and art music. Certainly they were not unexpected for Rachmaninov, because the tones of Russian religious choirs - dark, rich, sonorous - haunted his inner ear as much as the sound of piano" (Gramophone)