Hvorostovsky Tours America

The great Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky set a new record for himself and for his legendary performances of Russian music during the month of November and early December 2007. In appearances with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Constantine Orbelian, the Academy of Choral Art and the Style of Five folk ensemble, he literally barnstormed Mexico, the USA, and Canada from coast to coast in a series of concerts that included highlights from all phases of his extensive repertoire.

In cities extending from Berkeley-San Francisco, Pasadena-Los Angeles, Dallas and New York City to Miami, Washington DC, Montreal Toronto, Chicago and Boston, Hvorostovsky gave full-length programs ranging from Russian liturgical classics and opera arias to popular Russian songs and romances so beloved by his countrymen. Large audiences of opera and vocal fans filled the auditoriums as well as multitudes of expatriate Russians who showed up in every city, delighted to hear near-ideal interpretations of many of their favorite popular songs from the homeland.

American reviewers, while recognizing that Dmitri has become the world’s foremost champion of Russian Soul in song form, don’t quite understand the importance of the popular song or “romance” in Russian life. Most of us have fond memories of the favorite popular songs of our youth, but few Americans feel the intense emotional attachment Russians continue to have for their own sentimental songs, many based on beautiful Russian poetry. Perhaps because so many of these songs are associated with the sorrow and tragedies of the early part of the 20th century, they have imprinted themselves indelibly in Russian hearts and minds as important documents and milestones in their lives and loves.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky and his own family share these feelings with their countrymen. By bringing his vocal artistry to this very special repertoire, he gives these sometimes happy, often sad, simple songs a dignity and integrity as moving as almost anything in the classic literature.

Of course every tour program included an array of Dmitri’s signature opera arias: from Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” and “Queen of Spades” as well as lesser-known arias from operas by Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, and Borodin. "His interpretation of the arias of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky are now trademarked with the DH insignia," remarks Orbelian, his collaborator in many performances and recording projects.

For music lovers appreciative of Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s art but unable to attend any of these gala events there are attractive alternatives on the Delos label. A stunning DVD, To Russia with Love, documents a live concert in St. Petersburg in which Mr. Hvorostovsky sings many of the same Russian romances and songs he featured on his recent tour. Strikingly photographed before a live audience, it should not be missed.

Heroes and Villains, Dmitri’s new aria recording (DE 3365) becomes the eighth in the Delos series featuring many facets of his supreme art. These include Verdi Arias (DE 3292), Passione di Napoli (DE 3290), Moscow Nights (DE 3339), Where are You, My Brothers? (DE 3315), I Met You, My Love (DE 3293), Sviridov’s Petersburg (DE 3311), and Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades (DE 3289).

San Francisco: “Hvorostovsky and his perfect control of a beautiful expressive baritone voice was the brilliant star of the show.” — San Francisco Classical Voice, Stefanie Friedman

Dallas: “Few singers nowadays have Hvorostovsky’s command of legato line and phrasing. His burnished tone and extraordinary breath control were thrilling.” — Dallas Star-Telegram, Matthew Erickson

Boston: “…immensely smooth and deep, full and agile, never forced or strained.” — Boston Globe, Jeremy Eicher

Montreal: “Hvorostovsky carries the big line with an intense arresting tone and heartbreaking dignity. Here was great music sung by an operatic top gun. Shivers were inevitable.” — The Gazette, Arthur Kaptainis

New York: “Chaliapin, Kipnis, Christoff, Ghiaurov, Hvorostovsky. The lineage of Eastern European male singers in the West remains unbroken. He is that rare Bird of Paradise, a natural baritone &$133;as good a singer as appears on any modern stage.” — New York Sun, Fred Kirshnit

New York: “Mr. Hvorostovsky was in splendid voice, singing with the improbable smoothness and cultural delivery that still makes listeners roll their eyes in wonder.” — New York Times, Bernard Holland

Chicago: “He is among the very few opera singers to have made it onto People magazine’s annual list of the world’s most beautiful people. If you add the sheer richness and beauty of his baritone and his gift for lofting long-spun phrases you have a winning combination.” — Chicago Tribune, John von Rhein

Miami: “His beautiful soft tones held the audience enthralled, yet his dusky lower register had the resonance and weight of a bass. The baritone’s seamless legato line poured forth in one unbroken arc.” — South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Lawrence Budmen

Washington, DC: “His baritone instrument remains undiminished, at once powerful and agile, full and nuanced.” — Washington Post, Daniel Ginsberg

Saxophone master in Bangkok debut

Bulletin

February 19, 2007 from The Nation (Thailand) by Thanong Khanthong (abridged)

Not many saxophonists can undertake a successful solo career as it’s tough to make it onto centre stage. But over the last twenty years, Italian-born Federico Mondelci has carved a niche for himself as one of the leading saxophonists of his generation.
On February 19, 2007, Bangkokians had a very rare opportunity to listen to Glazunov’s Saxophone Concerto featuring Mondelci as the soloist. It is a beautiful concerto written in 1930 with Russian style in three connected movements toward the end of Glazunov’s career in Paris. Mondelci played the alto saxophone for this 14-minute concerto.
Mondelci made his Bangkok debut at the Thailand Cultural Centre on February 19 with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra under the internationally renowned conductor Constantine Orbelian. The concert was part of A Tribute to the Supreme Artists in the Great Artists of the World series, which marks His Majesty the King’s 80th birthday this year.
Mondelci has collaborated with Orbelian and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra for dozens of concerts. Orbelian’s wife heard Mondelci play the saxophone and was very impressed with his performance. She asked her husband to listen to Mondelci, but it took about three years before Orbelian had a chance to do so. Ever since, Mondelci has been frequently invited to perform with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra.
Mondelci has represented Italy at the World Saxophone Festival in Germany, Japan, the United States and Spain. In Italy, he has been a soloist with all the major orchestras, including Milan’s Philharmonic Orchestra of La Scala under Seiji Ozawa. He now frequently performs in Russia. His CD Piazzolla Tangos on Delos (DE 3252) with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and Orbelian was a New York Times pick of the week.
Today many composers are devoting their music to this wonderful instrument, which is also a favourite of His Majesty the King. With the growing popularity of the saxophone, Thailand will be hosting a saxophone symposium in 2009.
What makes Mondelci different from other saxophone artists is that he makes his saxophone sing. “When I play the saxophone, I have a special feeling for it. I like to sing with my saxophone, which has a vocal character,” he said.

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.

Delos Artists Celebrate after Falstaff

Celebration time after a recent performance of Verdi's Falstaff at L.A. Opera. The place: Glendale's famous Armenian restaurant, The Carousel. The people seated from left: Ana Landauer, assistant concertmaster; and Armen Anassian, first violin from the opera orchestra. Leaning forward is Vassily Gerello, baritone, who sings Ford in the L.A. Falstaff, his arm encircling Chris Landen, Delos recording producer. Chris displays Vassily's Delos CD recording Favorite Ukrainian Folk Songs. Standing behind are tenor Daniil Shtoda, who sings the young lover Fenton in the opera and whose CD of Russian Tenor Opera Arias is soon to be released by Delos.
Judging from the table, a good time was had by all.

Hvorostovsky, Orbelian, Domashenko Shine in Moscow Concert

In little more than two years Dmitri Hvorostovsky has recorded for Delos International a remarkably wide-ranging repertoire — from Verdi arias to old Russian romances, from Neapolitan songs to Russian war songs. Understandably, the facets of this diverse material are increasingly represented in his many concerts.

Last April with Constantine Orbelian and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Hvorostovsky created a sensation singing war songs, an inspiring body of pieces in popular idiom that resonates strongly with the Russian audience. A telecast of the event on May 8 — the eve of Victory Day celebrating the end of World War II — was reportedly viewed by 98 million people.

On December 9 2003, it was the turn of the familiar opera aria and duet, as Hvorostovsky and Orbelian appeared the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, part of a tour that included Frankfurt, Munich and London and that had the critic of the Guardian proclaiming: "Hvorostovsky continues to astonish, and his voice remains one of the most beautiful of the world."

Brazilian Guitar Quartet on Tour

The BGQ will be touring in North America during the early part of 2004. Click on the link below to see if any of their stops will be near your city.

Artist News Category

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