Delos Diary

Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Constantine Orbelian get their 2006 show on the road with a gala concert for LA Opera on Sunday, January 15

Last summer Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Constantine Orbelian, leading his Moscow Chamber Orchestra, gave an inspiring series of joint concerts honoring a number of so-called Russian "Hero Cities." Each of these cities had played a crucial role in the victory of Russia and its allies over Nazi Germany in World War II, exactly 60 years ago. These concerts featured Dmitri Hvorostovsky singing songs from the War period which helped to sustain the morale of the military and civilians during that horrendous time, songs still well known and beloved in Russia by both young and old. The response to these programs in Russia was unprecedented, culminating in a triumphant outdoor gala in St. Petersburg.
With their shared canny sense of showmanship, Dmitri and Constantine have brought virtually the same program to the U.S. this month. Audiences in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, New York, and Miami will all get to hear the music that proved so successful in Russia last summer.
Juding from the premiere concert in Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion sponsored by LA Opera on Sunday, January 15, the artists can look forward to large and enthusiastic audiences wherever they perform. In addition to seemingly every expatriate Russian in the L.A. area (and there are a lot of them), the usual crowd of opera fans showed up en masse. Everyone in the audience lived and breathed with the program of Russian opera arias and war songs from beginning to end.
Hvorostovsky looked splendid and sang this repertoire as only he can. Orbelian, with the augmented Philharmonia of Russia, provided his uniquely sympathetic accomaniments and added a number of stirring orchestra interludes. The wonderful Oakland-based Pacific Boys Choir and the Russian folk ensemble Style of Five gave the final gilding to the already heavily gilded lily.
The next performances took place at the Kennedy Center in Washington on January 18 and Davies Hall in San Francisco on January 22 to great acclaim. Tonight, January 25, New Yorkers get their turn in Avery Fisher Hall, and then Miamians at the Jackie Gleason Theatre on January 31. Dmitri rejoins the traveling Russian ensemble for a final re-creation of this concert in London at the Barbican on February 17. This program has turned out to have such universal appeal that it may yet rival the success of "The Three Tenors." No, signed t-shirts are not yet available.

War Songs Tour Review

From Russia With Love and Patriotism

By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, January 20, 2006; C02

The resplendent Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky offered, in effect, two distinct concerts on the same program Wednesday night at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

The evening began with a goodly selection of Russian opera — and not merely "hits" from the great Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky works, but extended arias [and orchestral excerpts] from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Mlada," Rachmaninoff's "Aleko," Borodin's "Prince Igor" and Anton Rubenstein's "The Demon" and "Nero," the last two of which, especially, are all but unknown in this country.

Hvorostovsky combines a fierce, haunted and decidedly Eastern expressive intensity with immaculate, near-Gallic refinement. His breath control is extraordinarily well calibrated; he never sings sharp or flat, nor does he ever fall into the trap of offering sheer amplitude as a substitute for emotional conviction. Both his singing and his characterizations are appropriately virile and impassioned, yet there is an innate delicacy to his artistry that is as unexpected in this material as it is dazzlingly effective.

Constantine Orbelian led the Philharmonia of Russia, an orchestra he formed in Moscow five years ago, with our own Cathedral Choral Society joining in eagerly and effectively on several selections. The Philharmonia came across not so much as a seamlessly blended ensemble, but rather as a colorful gathering of soloists with strongly individual characteristics who had agreed to work together, however temporarily, for a common cause. … I thought the playing bracing, variegated and alive, and Orbelian's leadership engaging and idiomatic.

After intermission, Hvorostovsky took the stage again, this time with a microphone, for a program of sentimental and patriotic songs that were popular in Russia during World War II. The songs, which were presented mostly in modern arrangements, summon to mind all sorts of different material: "The Threepenny Opera," tango music without the edgy rhythms, the Parisian chansons of Charles Trenet and Jacques Brel. On occasion, they even seemed eerie, Slavic prefigurations of "Man of La Mancha"!

And yet they retained their own distinctive qualities. With titles such as "Wait for Me," "Somewhere Far Away" and "The Last Battle," they are little novels in themselves, vignettes of love, loss and, above all, a yearning for home. (Both the messianic utopianism and the Stalinist panegyrics that were endemic throughout pop music in the besieged Soviet Union were wisely avoided.) Hvorostovsky's interpretations were charming and heartfelt, more casual but no less meticulous than his performances of the opera arias. What might be described as a new-wave Russian folk group called the Style of Five, in which accordion and balalaika coexist with electronic sound, provided deft, fluid accompaniment.

The program was presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society, now in the midst of its 40th season of bringing music, dance and this sort of marvelous esoterica to the capital area.

(c) 2006 The Washington Post Company

Hvorostovsky/Orbelian/Philharmonia of Russia on Tour

January 4, 2006 — For Immediate Release
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Constantine Orbelian, Philharmonia of Russia extend Russian “Hero Cities” tour to bring “Songs of the War Years”
program to U.S. Music Centers and London’s Barbican

Five U.S. Music Centers and London’s Barbican will recreate the unique “Songs of the War Years” program that gave hundreds of thousands of Russia’s concertgoers a never-to-be-forgotten experience last summer. Such a concert, featuring music especially close to Hvorostovsky’s heart, was just too good an idea to be limited entirely to Russian audiences; and now American and English audiences have something very special coming their way.

The concert tour of great Western cities that started in Los Angeles on Sunday, January 15, and concludes in London on Saturday, February 17, will give an international audience a taste of what all the excitement was about last summer in Russia:

Los Angeles Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion: January 15
Washington Performing Arts Society, Kennedy Center: January 18
San Francisco Symphony Series, Davies Hall; January 22
New York City, Lincoln Center Great Performers Series; January 25
Miami, Concert Association of Florida, Jackie Gleason Theatre; January 31
London, Barbican Centre; February 17

War Songs Tour

This feature article was written for the Hvorostovsky/Orbelian Songs of the War Years concerts commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II. The commemorative concerts took place in May/June 2005 at Moscow's Kremlin Palace and in seven "Hero Cities" throughout Russia. These Hero Cities' — Tula, Smolensk, Volgograd (Stalingrad), Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg and St. Petersburg (Leningrad) — figured prominently in the pivotal battles and heroic victories of World War II.

SONGS OF THE WAR YEARS

I

In the life of any human being there is an event dividing his or her existence into "Before" and "After." Such events occur in the history of a country as well. The Second World War (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War) of 1941-45 divided the life and memory of several generations into two periods: before and after the War. And between "Before" and "After" were four terrible and heroic years: the red of blood, the din of screams and death-rattles — illuminated by missile explosions and crowned with the tear-washed exclamation: "Victory!"

Memory compresses these four years into a single fiery line. Memory permanently returns us to it — to the fiery line that represents the unity of our past and future; that is the source of our courage, and of our hope to hold out and to emerge victorious in a critical situation. And, too, Memory takes us back to our relatives and fellow countrymen, who "were knocked breathless in the mortal snowstorm." Memory reawakens our grief over their losses and our immense gratitude for their heroism.

And I’m again with them
at this fiery line,
near an unknown village
on a nameless hill.

When Dmitri Hvorostovsky performs this song, we stand next to him at that fiery line, since it is hardly possible to remain indifferent to the summons of Memory, powerfully emanating from the "Songs of the War Years." The songs of the war years form the basis of the new concert program by People's Artist of Russia, Laureate of the State Prize of Russia, Dmitri Hvorostovsky; and Honored Artist of Russia, Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the State Academic Chamber Orchestra of Russia, Constantine Orbelian.