War Songs Tour Review
From Russia With Love and Patriotism
By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 20, 2006; C02
The resplendent Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky offered, in effect, two distinct concerts on the same program Wednesday night at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.
The evening began with a goodly selection of Russian opera — and not merely “hits” from the great Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky works, but extended arias [and orchestral excerpts] from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Mlada,” Rachmaninoff’s “Aleko,” Borodin’s “Prince Igor” and Anton Rubenstein’s “The Demon” and “Nero,” the last two of which, especially, are all but unknown in this country.
Hvorostovsky combines a fierce, haunted and decidedly Eastern expressive intensity with immaculate, near-Gallic refinement. His breath control is extraordinarily well calibrated; he never sings sharp or flat, nor does he ever fall into the trap of offering sheer amplitude as a substitute for emotional conviction. Both his singing and his characterizations are appropriately virile and impassioned, yet there is an innate delicacy to his artistry that is as unexpected in this material as it is dazzlingly effective.
Constantine Orbelian led the Philharmonia of Russia, an orchestra he formed in Moscow five years ago, with our own Cathedral Choral Society joining in eagerly and effectively on several selections. The Philharmonia came across not so much as a seamlessly blended ensemble, but rather as a colorful gathering of soloists with strongly individual characteristics who had agreed to work together, however temporarily, for a common cause. … I thought the playing bracing, variegated and alive, and Orbelian’s leadership engaging and idiomatic.
After intermission, Hvorostovsky took the stage again, this time with a microphone, for a program of sentimental and patriotic songs that were popular in Russia during World War II. The songs, which were presented mostly in modern arrangements, summon to mind all sorts of different material: “The Threepenny Opera,” tango music without the edgy rhythms, the Parisian chansons of Charles Trenet and Jacques Brel. On occasion, they even seemed eerie, Slavic prefigurations of “Man of La Mancha”!
And yet they retained their own distinctive qualities. With titles such as “Wait for Me,” “Somewhere Far Away” and “The Last Battle,” they are little novels in themselves, vignettes of love, loss and, above all, a yearning for home. (Both the messianic utopianism and the Stalinist panegyrics that were endemic throughout pop music in the besieged Soviet Union were wisely avoided.) Hvorostovsky’s interpretations were charming and heartfelt, more casual but no less meticulous than his performances of the opera arias. What might be described as a new-wave Russian folk group called the Style of Five, in which accordion and balalaika coexist with electronic sound, provided deft, fluid accompaniment.
The program was presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society, now in the midst of its 40th season of bringing music, dance and this sort of marvelous esoterica to the capital area.
(c) 2006 The Washington Post Company
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