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RECITAL REVIEW
December 4, 2005
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By Stephanie Friedman
Sunday's concert at Hertz Hall, titled "Artists of the Mariinsky Academy," served as a showcase for two more of the remarkable young
artists from that renowned St. Petersburg institution
that artistic director, accompanist, teacher, and mentor Larissa Gergieva
periodically presents to audiences all over the world. The program,
not surprisingly, consisted of Russian songs, carefully tailored to
the talents and abilities of the featured singers: Irina Mataeva,
soprano, and Dmitri Voropaev, tenor.
The program, therefore, was not in any sense intended to be completely
representative of Russian song. Although Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff
were there, along with César Cui, Aleksandr Dargomizhsky,
Glière, and Gretchaninov, among others, there were no pieces by other
worthy composers important to Russian song, such as Glinka,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Borodin, or Balakirev. And though indeed
well-suited to the singers, they were not all gems of the repertoire.
There was nevertheless much to enjoy, starting with the appearance of
the singers. Mataeva, slight of figure, her shoulder-length black hair
freed from any "do," wore a red dress, and when I say "red" I mean "brake-light red." Doubtless many in the audience wondered where in the housing of that modest-size, lithe body a voice of such size and power could possibly reside. But it does, and expert training, like that of her vocal
partner and all others whom we've heard from the Academy, has enabled
a full, freely-produced voice to emerge, characterized by a Slavic
edge but not much color. Nevertheless, there is room for increased
richness in such a young, free voice, and it will undoubtedly come,
unforced, with greater maturity.
Dmitri Voropaev, clothed in formal concert wear, has equal power, a
similar edge, a remarkable pianissimo which he uses often, and a more
extensive range of color than his co-performer. But on occasion he
presses his voice in the upper-mid range when singing an abrupt forte
that he doesn't adequately prepare for, and his tone becomes
unpleasantly white.
The two singers started the program with a charming duet by Dargomizhsky (1813-1869), Ty i Vy, a little ditty that plays on the two uses of "you" (unfamiliar to us in modern English), familiar and formal, and the "accidental" confusing of the two by a young couple enamored of each other. The duet was unfortunately the sole piece by this gifted early composer, though more would have been welcome. But there was César Cui (1835-1918), one of whose four representations (all sung by the tenor) was the transfixing, masterful Statue at Tsarskoye Selo, to a beautiful poem by Pushkin. The song describes a girl who drops her urn on a rock. Although it breaks into pieces, water continues to pour from the urn as the girl sits sorrowfully holding the handle — a miraculous description of the transformation of life into frozen stone. One of the tenor's affecting diminuendos came at the end of the song on the word "sidit" (sits). In another song, Zdes' siren' tak bystro uvjadajet (Here the lilacs wither so quickly), Voropaev and the excellent Gergieva captured the melancholy mood beautifully. Both singers sang songs of Tchaikovsky, several of which linger in the ear. Voropaev's singing of Snova, kak prezhde, odin (I am alone again, as before), to a well-crafted poem by Daniil Rathaus, was set by the composer mainly in a series of repeated notes, or at most a range of three pitches. The emotion was thus tightly controlled, yet enough to wrench the heart from the listener's body. Kanarejka (The Canary), sung by the soprano, was a bit of "easternism": A sultan asks the caged bird to sing about foreign lands, but the bird has only one song, "svoboda" (freedom). Mataeva seemed to press her body forward on this final word, like the bird yearning to break out of its prison. In Zabyt' tak skoro (To forget so soon), the singer gave little color but much drama to the song, ending, after an outburst, with a hushed but emotional "Bozhe moj!" (Oh God!)
Aleksandr Varlamov (1801-1848) was represented by a duet, a setting of a version by Lermontov of Goethe's Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh (called in Russian "Gornyje vershiny" and in the English translation "Mountain Peaks"). Here the tenor sang high and the soprano low in her range, to pleasing effect. Mataeva's performance of Rachmaninoff's famous Siren' (Lilacs) demonstrated her excellent ability to scale down her voice to a half-piano without narrowing her tone. But it is when she opens out in full operatic mode, such as in the song that followed, Noch'ju v sadu u menja (In the night in my garden), that her voice is at its most thrilling. After having been led majestically across the stage by Gergieva for several eloquent bows at the conclusion of the concert, the pair sang one unannounced encore duet, from which I successfully elicited, I believe, one word: "nikogda" (never), which may or may not have been the title of the song.
(Stephanie Friedman, mezzo-soprano, is retired from more than three decades of singing in opera and concert, here and abroad.)
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