Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Wigmore Hall, London

Tim Ashley

Wednesday April 23 2003

The Guardian

Genuine stars are rare in the classical music world, though Russian baritoneDmitri Hvorostovsky ranks among them. He is glamorous and audiences love him.The moment he steps on to the platform, there are cheers. He plays up to the sex symbol image a bit, spattering his programme withsuggestively titled numbers like Extase and Frenzied Nights; the former by Duparc, the latter by Tchaikovsky. Applause spontaneously follows every song. Sometimes he likes it, basking in the adulation like a contented cat. At othersit annoys him: enthusiastic clapping after the first song of Mussorgsky'sSunless gets no response and his public is silent until the cycle is over. He is worth the fuss, partly because his voice is one of the greatest in theworld, partly because he refuses to rest on his laurels, continues to develop asan artist and refrains from indulging in tours to promote his latest CD. Much of his programme here is new: this is the first time, to my knowledge, thathe has tackled Sunless in the UK. It is Mussorgsky's grimmest work and dealswith one man's descent into madness and suicide after a chance encounter withhis ex-lover. Hvorostovsky and pianist Mikhail Arkadiev generate intensity: as  Hvorostovsky's voice ebbs and flows through massive crescendos and diminuendoswhile Arkadiev surrounds him with splashes of pianistic colour.  His incursions into the French repertoire have been few, though now he issinging Duparc like one born to it. Extase, with its intimations of post-coitallanguor, gets his audience going and elsewhere he is equally astonishing,whether filing his voice down to a rapt whisper while contemplating the sleepingPhydilé or infusing his tone with a hint of metal for the nightmarishtintinnabulations of La Vague et la Cloche.  He also gives us Ravel's Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, filling itshispanically inflected lines with shadows of sadness and regret. For his encore,he erupts into Iago's blasphemous Creed from Verdi's Otello, rolling his eyesheavenwards at the deity he curses and making you wonder how he would sing therole in its entirety. Staggering stuff, all of it, leaving you in no doubt thathe is one of the great recitalists of our time.

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