San Francisco Classical Voice

“Why?” a setting of a poem after Heine by I. Mey, starts with an almost unbearable, exquisitely simple series of beautifully hushed chords, which then build inexorably towards an impassioned climax. This happens as the sad, dying flowers, the stilled bird-song, and the cold, dull sun in the winter sky reflect and ultimately give way to the greater grief of the abandoned lover — a favorite theme of the poet Heine. Singer and pianist drove the song forward in judiciously measured increments of emotion; the song would have finished perfectly, but an over-eager portion of the audience ruined the ending of the song. As they did at many other endings of songs, they started to applaud before the pianist had released the final, eloquent chord. In an art song, as both of the evening's chosen composers knew well, the piano has as important a role to play as the singer. The resolution of the song in the piano thus completes it and fulfills the composer's musical intention. Vocal recital-goers should learn to let that happen, for their own greater enjoyment and that of others.

In another song, Hvorostovsky chose to break his flawless legato with quiet, telling passion in the final line of the song that reiterates its title, “moj genij, moj angel, moj drug” (my genius, my angel, my friend). His passionate repetitions of “vsjo” (all) in the song “Be it Day that Reigns,” which praises the beloved, transmitted the singer's ardor to the piano postlude, which Ilja played with matching passion, as if reluctant to cede the entire outburst of feeling to the voice.

Among the Rachmaninoff songs, a beautifully constructed song, “She is as Lovely as the Noon” displayed charming little Rachmaninovian piano doodles between fairly static vocal lines. The baritone painted the word “ochi” (eyes) in the song with unwonted color, all the more welcome for its rarity. After a badly timed cell phone peal from somewhere in the balcony, which delayed the start of the song, Hvorostovsky endowed “Christ is Risen” with a special bitterness and vehemence. That emotion may have owed as much to his annoyance with the cell phone's owner as it might have to the song's relevance to today's political situation (“The world is full of spilt blood and tears”).

One of Rachmaninoff's most famous and beloved songs, “Do Not Sing to Me, Fair Maiden,” was given a duly passionate rendition by both singer and pianist, who, as always, worked together perfectly. But the pause before the final reprise of the song was broken into by a small segment of the audience who, thinking the song finished, started to applaud; one man even yelled “Bravo!” so loud that he couldn't hear the singer resume his singing and so continued his outburst for a while. There were several candidates in the audience who merited the short, sharp shock of the guillotine, but this man would no doubt have been placed first in line at the scaffold.

Of the three encores, two were accompanied: ”Parlami d'amore Mariú” by Helmut Lotti, and “Core ingrato” by Salvatore Cardillo. The third, a Russian folk song, “The Dark Night,” was sung unaccompanied, the singer standing relatively motionless until the last part of the song, when he began to sway and sing with such emotion that he seemed in a trance. Folk song it might have been, but the mesmerizing fervency of the Russian Orthodox liturgy was surely embedded in it. When Hvorostovsky had finished, the gripped audience uncharacteristically held its breath for a few seconds of silence before erupting into applause.