TCHAIKOVSKY and Rachmaninov romances were to have been the theme of
the romantic young Dmitri Hvorostovsky's recital, but in fact he sang
Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov as well, all with the same finely measured
utterance, the beauty of tone within a limited range of baritone
colouring, the grandly sweeping gestures that form part of what we like
to think of as the Russian tradition.
Not for nothing, it seemed, had the boy from Siberia been awarded the
BBC's Singer of the World prize three years ago.
Yet about his programme as a whole there was a lack of focus, of that
sense of structure through which one discovers why certain songs are
chosen and sung in a certain order.
Keener characterisation, and greater differentiation between one song
and the next, would doubtless have made the first, all-Tchaikovsky half
of the recital seem more cogent.
The audience's determination to applaud every song did not help.
Perhaps the sheer size of the Usher Hall was partly to blame for what
one could only call the lack of personality, and for a certain monotony
of timbre.
Yet when passion erupted, as in Rimsky's song about the pounding and
surging breakers, both the singer and his accompanist, Julian Reynolds,
rose without roughness to the occasion.
The fine-grained artistry with which Hvorostovsky used his voice was
never less than impressive, and his avoidance of the coarseness that
some Russian singers bring to the concert platform was to be praised.
Tchaikovsky's None But the Lonely Heart -- or (as it was called this
time) No, Only Those Who Have Longed -- did not drip with emotion and
sounded all the better for being sung without exaggeration.
By the time he reached his final Rachmaninov group Hvorostovsky was
into his stride.
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