Don Kosaken Chor

This means absolute dedication to the highest standards of performance, to power, greatness, but also a huge expenditure of energy and artistic effort, to remain on the lonely heights of fame with youthful vigour for half a century.

The choir, founded in 1921 in the Turkish barracks of Chilingir near Istanbul, with Serge Jaroff always leading it as conductor and arranger, is something unique in concert history.

Who is this Serge Jaroff, who exercises such a compulsive fascination when he conducts his choir?

Cossack cadet leading a squadron of cavalry in the Russian civil war? World-famous conductor of a unique choir? Pupil and friend of contemporary Russian composers, himself the creator of considerable compositions?

Serge Jaroff is all this and much more. Choral singing is his empire, and he controls all the registers of this organ of human voices with virtuoso skill.

Serge Jaroff was born in a small town in the district of Kostroma in north-east Russia. At the age of five he already sang in the local church choir. His father, a merchant, sent him to school at the age of seven. At ten he passed the entrance examination of the Synodal Music School in Moscow.

In this most famous conservatory for church music and choir conducting Serge Jaroff studied for eleven years, due to a scholarship for extraordinary musicianship, and had brilliant results in the final examination.

These must have been the best years of his life. He sang in the church choir of the Aspensky cathedral in the Kremlin. He often thinks sadly of the wonderful Easter services they had. Everything is now so long ago and far away! Each year the Synodal Music School prepared a new Mass for Russia's greatest church, partly to honour the composers with their interpretation. He had plentiful opportunities to take part in performances of the works of leading composers.

Katalsky was for years director of the Synodal School and among the teachers were Tchaikovsky, Tchesnokov, Rachmaninov and Gretchaninov.

After the final examinations, his formal education came to an end on 20th March 1917. Then Serge Jaroff went to the Alexander Military Academy and was promoted to Lieutenant.

The revolution smouldered menacingly, and Lieutenant Jaroff went to the front to fight against the Bolsheviks. Special units of cadets and officers were formed and with one of these Jaroff went to Romania and from there back to Moscow, where the Civil War was raging. He fought on the White Russian side in a brigade of Don Cossacks against the Red North.

After the victory of the Reds against the White Army the loyalist troops cut their way through to the Crimea, where a large part of the White Russian navy lay. They escaped in the Russian ships, covered by English and French cruisers, to Turkey, where most of the Russian troops were interned at Chilingir.

In this prison camp Serge Jaroff formed the Don Cossack Choir. Good fortune brought the choir to Austria, where their first concert was performed in the ceremonial hall of the "Hofburg" of Vienna.

A new period of life started.

In 1924 the Don Cossacks performed their first concerts in Germany, in Munich, Hamburg and other cities, then moved on to Belgium, Holland, England, and in 1926 to France.

Their 100th concert was given in Budapest in 1928. And so the world's most famous choir travelled from continent to continent until 1939, when the Second World War broke out.

All the members succeeded in escaping in good time to America, where they all became resident and received US citizenship.

The choir then travelled in Mexico, Cuba, South and Central America. In Hollywood they featured in several movies. In 1945, immediately after the war, the choir revisited Germany with a concert at Frankfurt on Main. From longing for their second home, the cradle of their success, the choir undertook a tour to sing for the American army of occupation, including the headquarters of General Eisenhower.

Before some of the crowned heads were robbed of their thrones, the Don Cossack Choir performed concerts in royal palaces: at first for King Boris of Bulgaria in the period from 1921 to 1923, then for King George of Greece in 1924. They sang before King George V in 1925 and again in 1928, and before King Christian of Denmark and King Gustav of Sweden in 1927 as well as before the last Queen of Rumania in the same year.

In 1956 the Don Cossack Choir Serge Jaroff travelled for the first time to Japan for a seven-week tour. They were the first western artists who were allowed to sing in the imperial palace and to perform a concert for the Emperor himself. The same tour brought the choir to Australia.

The Original Don Cossacks Choir is probably the most famous choir of the world, and Serge Jaroff, its conductor und founder, the guarantor for a constantly maintained musical standard, is the spirit of the choir, which he conducts by slight gestures and controls completely. Slightly built but full of dynamic energy, he knows to fuse the voices of his Cossacks into one sound. And despite the astonishing harmony, the plurality of voices, each that of a soloist, is never lost.

Each year the choir comes for a complete concert season to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain and Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. In spring and summer the long-planned concert tours go through the countries on the other side of the globe.

In this way the choir is practically always en route. Greater distances often have to be travelled by air so as to reach the next concert in time.

Today this world-famous choir visits your town and Serge Jaroff conducts a magnificent Jubilee concert.

They were immensely popular in American and international tours in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The men, dressed as Cossacks, sang a cappella in a repertory of Russian sacred and operatic music, army songs and folk songs. Cossack dancing was eventually added to their programs.

It is the year 1920. In Russia the civil war is raging. Troops from the Don region are interned in Turkey, in Chilingir, a village many hours from Istanbul. Christmas is approaching. The men suffer from hunger, cold and loneliness - many die from cholera. From the former regimental choirs the best remaining singers join together, among them a young Cossack officer, Serge Jaroff.

In two rows the men stand in a semicircle, in their dark blue uniforms, the trousers with a broad, dark red lateral stripe, a leather belt slung round the loose shirt. Their eyes look forward at a small, unprepossessing Cossack lieutenant. A tall, loose-limbed young Cossack, Sasha, takes two steps forward: »Tovarishchi«, he says with trembling voice, »we will start by singing >Save, Oh God, Thy People