Search - Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Ivari Ilja :: Tchaikovsky: Romances

Tchaikovsky Songs by the Quintessential Russian Baritone of

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 10/30/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This 2CD set contains glorious singing by the reigning Russian baritone of our day, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, presenting music that is clearly close to his heart.



The only fault I find with this collection of Tchaikovsky 'romances' (the Russian equivalent of 'Lieder') is that all that Tchaikovskian melancholy at once is likely to drive you to be thinking of suicide. But taken one by one or only a few at a time, the singing and the melodies will have you in raptures. We in the West don't tend to know much about Tchaikovsky songs beyond 'None but the Lonely Heart' (which is the first track on CD1) and yet there is great richness there. Tchaikovsky wrote over a hundred romances. Here we get only a few of them -- 24, to be exact -- and they represent a peak of Russian song-writing. They do indeed depend largely on that unending wellspring of Russian melancholy and thus they do superficially tend to sound alike. But taken individually there are some really special works here. Even Tchaikovsky's earliest song, 'My Genius, My Angel, My Friend' ['Moy geniy, moy angel, moy drug'], written when he was sixteen, tugs at one's heart in its plea for tranquil dreams. 'Not a Word, O My Friend' ['Ni siova, o drug moy'] whose scene is of friends standing silently together at the tombstone of a loved one is beautifully limned in Tchaikovsky's setting. Even a song like 'Heroic Deeds' ['Podvig'] has its melancholy beauty in the narrator's consideration of 'human evil.' There are, of course, some relatively happy songs, e.g. 'Tell Me What in the Shade of the Branches' ['Skazhi, o chom v teni vetvey'] which celebrates the ecstasy of love, or 'Does the Day Reign' ['Den' li tsarit'] in which the narrator is made thankful for thoughts of his love one. And there is a 'nature song' in 'I Bless You, Forest' ['Blagoslavlyayu vas, lesa']. But overall the tone is the kind of Romantic era sadness [e.g., Goethe's 'Sorrows of Young Werther'] so prevalent in Europe in the 19th century.



And the melodies are typical of no one but Tchaikovsky, so beloved by music-lovers this past century and a half. Thank you, Dmitri Hvorostovski (and your accompanist, Ivar Ilja) for bringing us such riches.



The total timing for these two CDs is only a bit over 80 minutes, slightly too much for a single CD, and it is priced as if it were only one CD.



Scott Morrison"