Fanny torture
By T.
Hashimoto
The SF Examiner
9 May 2002
Dmitri's reprieve
A musical friend sternly admonishes me for leaving Dmitri Hvostovsky off my list of biblical frogs ... err, hunky baritones. "Who," he asks with some justice "is more of a hunk than Dima?"
Not only that, the Silver-Maned Siberian holds up his end of the classical music bargain struck when God gave him those platinum pipes -- he commissions contemporary music. His latest adventure is the song cycle "Don't Grieve" (poetry by Pasternak, Byron, Rilke, Auden, Goethe, Shakespeare and others), by the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli.
Completed before the Sept. 11 tragedy, "Don't Grieve" nonetheless is "sad, even tragic," according to the composer, whose style has been likened to other mystical minimalists such as Arvo Pärt and Henryck Gorecki.
Hvorostovsky sings the cycle, accompanied by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, at 8 p.m. Wednesday through May 17 at Davies Symphony Hall, Grove Street and Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco. Call (415) 864-6000 for tickets. Those unable to attend can hear this concert, which includes Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloe" at 8 p.m. May 28 on KDFC-FM (102.7).
(c) SF Examiner, 2002