Baritone's soulful performance touches emotions of audience
Donald Rosenberg
Plain Dealer
6 December 2002
Audiences can be forgiven for going daffy while listening to Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The Russian baritone claims a voice of distinctive, soulful timbre unlike that of any other singer today, and he turns phrases that grip the ears.
Oh, and those long, white locks and matinee-idol bearing cause some people to swoon.
Whatever the reasons, Hvorostovsky deserves the attention. He enchants principally because he is an imposing interpreter, especially when he lets that mound of hair down even further.
Hvorostovsky did so most beguilingly at the tail end of his recital Wednesday at Akron's E.J. Thomas Hall on the Tuesday Musical series. After offering subtly shaded performances of heart-on-sleeve and gloomy songs by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, he presented three encores, including two Neapolitan songs that finally revealed the full extent of his musical gifts.
The Italian encores released Hvorostovsky from the restrained elegance he'd brought, appropriately, to the Russian repertoire. But how delightful to hear him pour such expressive grandeur into Rodolfo Falvo's "Dicitencello Vuje" and Salvatore Cardilla's "Catari," with its unbuttoned proclamations of "Core 'ingrato" ("Unfaithful heart"). Here was great singing that sent goose bumps skyward.
What preceded these gems was also very fine, if too unvaried in atmosphere to sustain an entire program. Hvorostovsky and pianist Yelena Kurdina, whose collaborations were rich and haunting all evening, spent the first half with Tchaikovsky and the second with Rachmaninoff.
These pieces, mostly dealing with lost love, are marvelous examples of each composer's art. Tchaikovsky even contributed the text for one of his songs, "The Fearful Moment," whose protagonist is unsure whether his lover will accept or abandon him.
Hvorostovsky made direct contact with the emotions, using a rainbow of colorations to suggest the psychological journeys. He avoided any opera-singer temptation to overdramatize. Instead, he treated each piece as a story to be shared intimately.
The Rachmaninoff set was even better. Hvorostovsky sounded warmer and more communicative in the melancholic and fervent writing. At the end of "In the Silence of the Secret Night," he spun a high, soft note that seemed to float on air. "Christ Is Risen," an indictment of humanity, sounded chilling in his sad, angry account.
Hvorostovsky's first encore was an aria from Rachmaninoff's one-act opera, "Aleko," which he delivered in bold, stentorian fashion. The audience, which had applauded every song on the program, didn't hold back.
And the baritone was ever gracious, notably when a woman in the first row had the audacity to thrust her program onstage at the end of the concert's first half. Hvorostovsky kneeled down and gave her his autograph.
Daffy, indeed.