Delos Diary

The diversity of population in Los Angeles continues to surprise. In West Hollywood alone, over 6,000 Russian-speaking immigrants have found new homes. Many are Russian Jews who fled post-World War II persecution for our friendlier clime, and now are living out their old age surrounded by the glitz of Hollywood.
Among these thousands, over 500 men are veterans of what the Russians still call the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. To pay tribute to their honorable military service, private and public money has been raised to sponsor a monument in West Hollywood's Plummer Park. The face of the seven-ton granite memorial will feature carvings of three white cranes and four lines from the famous poem "Cranes" by Soviet poet Rasul Gamzatov.
Here's where Delos comes into the picture. In 2002, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the internationally renowned. Russian baritone, recorded an album for Delos entitled Where Are You, My Brothers? (DE 3315). Along with 16 other songs from the war years, the musical setting of the poem "Cranes" by composer Yan Frenkel stands out as almost unbearably poignant. The four lines of the song-poem that will be featured on the monument are probably these:
It seems to me sometimes that soldiers
Who didn't come home from the blood-soaked battlefields
Weren't laid to rest in the earth.
But turned into white cranes.
If the final monument lives up to the beauty and emotional appeal of the war songs included in Hvorostovsky's album, it will be a sight to see when it is unveiled on May 8.
Meanwhile there is the Delos album in which Hvorostovsky's art is enhanced by the accompaniment of Constantine Orbelian conducting the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Style of Five and the Spiritual Revival Choir of Russia.