NSO's Fine Opener With A Splendid 'Replacement'
By Tim Page
Claude Debussy had his "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun";
the National Symphony Orchestra's
season-opening celebration might have
been dubbed a "Prelude to an Evening of Dining, Wining and
Fancy Duds." Saturday night's
concert at the Kennedy Center offered some genuine musical interest -- notably
the splendid, sinuous singing of
baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky -- but the emphasis was on providing an interlude of cultural entertainment amid a
day of social festivities.
And this orchestra has much to celebrate: It has, as they say in the music biz,
become a very good "band" indeed, playing with a security and across-the-board excellence that could
not have been imagined 10 years ago. Even in a program such as this -- which
had to be assembled pretty much at the last minute due to an ever-changing cast
of characters -- the players acquitted themselves, for the most part, with
elegance and always with vigour.
Jessye Norman originally had agreed to be the soloist but dropped out in midsummer for health reasons. She was
replaced by another soprano, Angela Gheorghiu, who withdrew two weeks ago
because of a scheduling conflict. Fortunately, Hvorostovsky was available:
NSO Music Director Leonard Slatkin got on the phone -- and the audience
got lucky.
An imposing, leonine figure with long white hair, elegantly clad in a
modernist tuxedo, Hvorostovsky won over Washington from the first notes of
Verdi's "Eri tu" from "Un Ballo in Maschera." (His upcoming
recital, to be presented in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on March
27 by the Washington Performing Arts Society, immediately became one of the
season's hottest tickets.) He sings Verdi wonderfully, but is by no means what
is customarily known as a "Verdi baritone," with its implication of
Italianate warmth and effusion. No, Hvorostovsky comes from the East -- from
Siberia, no less -- and he sounds it. His voice has a hard beauty, with a jet-black tone and a commanding quality
even in the most tender music; he is an artist of both musical and
dramatic distinction.
In all, Hvorostovsky sang five selections, each of them greeted with greater
enthusiasm than the one before. The drinking song from Ambroise Thomas's
"Hamlet" was a favourite of the legendary baritone Titta Ruffo, who
made a famous recording, but it is rarely heard today. And for obvious reasons
-- this is deeply strenuous music that mustt be tossed off as if it were a
casual toast. Most baritones stay far away from such material, but Hvorostovsky
managed it as if it were child's play, with dazzling range and power
After a wrenchingly intense performance of "Ya vas lyublyu" from
Tchaikovsky's "Queen of Spades," Hvorostovsky took the stage again
for an encore -- the Neapolitan song "O Sole Mio"! This famous tune
-- almost always sung by tenors -- is hardly what one might have expected
from a Siberian baritone, but Hvorostovsky was absolutely convincing. What next
from this versatile musician? Carmen's "Habanera"?
Slatkin has
a taste for what the late Sir Thomas Beecham used to call musical
"bonbons" -- short, sweet compositions that satisfy immediate
cravings. The program opened with Berlioz's "Roman Carnival" Overture,
in which Slatkin neatly negotiated the composer's mixture of extravagant
romanticism and underlying serenity. Faure's "Pavane" was played with
pensive lyricism, Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" Overture with jaunty
swagger. There was a set of waltzes from Richard Strauss's "Der
Rosenkavalier" and a deeply silly piece by Leroy Anderson titled "The
Waltzing Cat," in which the audience was called upon to meow (and an
orchestra member to bark back). Only Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio
Italien," the last work on the program, seemed clattering and offhanded.
It would have been better to call it a night with "O Sole Mio" --
almost anything would have been anticlimactic after that.
September 2003
reviews Reviews index September 2003
Performance Diary . Performance
Diary 2003 Site index