Delos Diary

This past week included a long-anticipated trip to New York City… a few days there with a specific purpose directly involving Delos International. Two events in two days, with the accompanying receptions, eating bouts, and friendly reunions, made for an exciting change of pace in our daily grind of turning out Delos masterpieces.
First on Thursday, October 9th, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the distinguished Russian baritone and Delos recording artist, was honored with a gathering and reception at the Russian Consulate in New York City at 9 E. 91st St., housed in a beautiful old mansion near the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. The Russian consul and his associates are well aware that with his Delos recording of "Where Are You, My Brothers?" - Songs of the War Years (DE 3315) Hvorostovsky has done a great PR job to help elicit understanding and sympathy among western audiences for the suffering the Russians endured during World War II.
The reception was held between 6 and 9 in the evening and included an hour long, never to be forgotten recital by the honorée, accompanied at the piano by maestro Constantine Orbelian. Special piano arrangements had been created for the occasion, and Constantine Orbelian proved as talented an accompanist as he is a conductor. Hvorostovsky sang several of the War Songs from the Delos album, a Romance from the opera Demon by Rubinstein, O Sole Mio (included in his Passione di Napoli album) and a final, very moving and somber Russian folk song, sung a capella.
The glory of the Hvorostovsky voice, heard in a relatively intimate room holding perhaps one hundred auditors, is hard to describe. Although he had sung the preceding evening in one of the Met's sold-out series of La Traviata and was due to sing again two days later, he held nothing back. The only adequate response afterwards was to flee to one of the buffet tables and toast his artistry with a celebratory shot of Russian vodka. The privileged assembly of guests, which included diplomats, ballet dancers, singers and friends, seemed well aware that they were probably the luckiest people in New York City that evening. Most of them left clutching copies of the Delos War Songs CD as precious souvenirs of a unique event.
My next entry will continue with a description of the second great Delos-associated occasion of the New York visit.