Here is my Thursday August 20 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the sold-out all-Russian song recital at Ravinia's Martin Theatre Tuesday August 18, 2009, given by baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky and pianist Ivari Ilja.
Photo (above): Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times, 2008
Siberian baritone lives up to early promise
Hvorostovsky delivers breathtaking performance at Ravinia
It's 20 years now since the Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky burst onto the world music scene. Winning the Cardiff "Singer of the World" Competition at just 26 -- and nudging out Welsh native son Bryn Terfel in the process -- the long-haired ex-streetfighter had great hopes placed upon his broad shoulders.
He has fulfilled many of them, and though he has had two decades of personal ups and downs (a divorce and remarriage, a self-disclosed alcohol problem now ended), his focus on both opera and concert work in the Italian, French, and Russian repertoire has remained steady. Over the last few days, Ravinia Festival has been showcasing this dedicated and charismatic artist. His riveting performance in the title role of Verdi's Rigoletto on Saturday night with James Conlon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and his quite astonishing all-Russian recital at the Martin Theatre on Tuesday night would indicate that, on the cusp of 47, and with hair fully white, Hvorostovsky might be singing better than ever.
Imagine if we knew Schubert, Schumann, and Debussy only through their masterful instrumental works. We would have half of their stories, at best. To hear a full recital of the little-known songs of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Rachmaninoff's near-contemporary Nikolai Medtner went beyond being a treat or even a revelation. This was something of a restoration.
Turning to some of the same poets as the 19th century German masters did, Heine and Goethe, but also having the greatest Russians at hand, including Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov, and Leo Tolstoy's cousin, Alexei K. Tolstoy, these composers poured their hearts out into a stream of literally hundreds of songs dear to their countrymen but forbidding to singers who lack the language and almost unknown to Western audiences.
Offering 10 "romances" -- the composer's preferred term -- of Tchaikovsky, five songs of Medtner, and five more of Rachmaninoff, Hvorostovsky and his superb accompanist Ivari Ilja both made the strongest possible case for this rich material and left listeners regretful that they cannot hear it more often.
Such songs as Tchaikovsky's early "Otchego?" ("Why") and Rachmaninoff's 1906 "Let Us Rest" are masterworks not only of music but of word setting and human longing. Medtner (1880-1951), whose solo piano works have been championed in recent years by Evgeny Kissin and other younger performers, was able to take the most tightly compressed lyrics and explode them in a host of harmonic and emotional directions.
Hvorostovsky owned all of this material. His best characteristics -- the richness of his baritone, the lyrical nature of his lines, and his preternatural breath control -- were all on display, or rather implicit in everything he did. Even a couple of beyond-belief note holdings to rival Ethel Merman were done to make an artistic point and not merely to show off . In conversation, Russian speakers and experts in the audience praised not only Hvorostovsky's pronunciation and enunciation, but his deep understanding of the poetry involved.
The Estonian Ilja was beyond a great partner to the singer. Each of these composers knew the piano as well as anyone, and the pianist played both accompanying and solo passages with beauty, passion, and refinement as required. It would be a great pleasure to hear him in recital.
Two Neapolitan songs and another from Rachmaninoff were the almost unnecessary encores after such a perfect program.
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