Radvanovsky & Hvorostovsky @ Carnegie Hall

Thursday April 1, 2010 - A joint concert at Carnegie Hall with soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky conducted by Marco Armiliato. Above: Dima and Sondra in the Met's TROVATORE, a Ken Howard photo.

It took quite a while for the audience to settle in tonight: for one thing, there was annoying late seating. And numerous cellphone cadenzas - always at the worst possible moments musically. Thus, despite fine vocalism, the first pieces Dima and Sondra offered didn't completely hold my attention. The baritone sang the dramatic 'Resta immobile' from Rossini's GUGLIELMO TELL and the soprano repeated 'Ernani, involami' from her Met performances of last season, her Verdi line and gleaming top notes most welcome. Singing Carlo's great aria from ERNANI, Dima got the evening centered and from then on the level of singing was astounding.

 

Sondra's Song to the Moon from RUSALKA was a richly poetic rendering, so mysterious in the low-lying quasi-parlando lines near the end. The power and beauty with which she sculpted the aria's great lyrical arches was both impressive and moving. Gleaming climax: a great voice in a gorgeous aria. 

Image from the concert by Daniel Barry/NY Times.

With the great Verdi scenes from BOCCANEGRA and BALLO, the two singers showed us that golden age vocalism has not entirely vanished from the face of the Earth. In the 'recognition' duet where Simon Boccanegra finds his long-lost daughter, Dima served notice that his performances in this opera next season will be red-letter events. His hesitant build up of hope was superbly expressed and his legato at 'Figlia! A tal nome io palpito...' was like unfurling a bolt of priceless silk. Sondra perfectly caught the wonderment of the dawning realization of who Amelia really is, spinning out the vocal line with real finesse and emotion, letting fly with a joyous climactic top note which released her pent-up feelings. When singing together, their entwined timbres and their lovely taperings of phrase made listening a pure pleasure. As his daughter rushes off in her new-found happiness, Dima spun out a luminously sustained piano top F on the concluding 'Figlia!'

Both singers took the level even higher in the BALLO scene where the furious Renato informs his 'faithless' wife that she must die for her betrayal of their marriage. Sondra's singing of Amelia's pleading 'Morro, ma prima in grazia...' showed her to be the singular Verdi soprano of our time. With her superb breath control and her flawless sense of the drama underlying each word and phrase, she made the aria both musically and emotionally meaningful. With her control of piano/pianissimo gradations, Sondra is now in a class with those great spinners of sound: Milanov and Caballe. And perhaps Sondra's soft notes are even more expressively woven in to the music's fabric than those of the two earlier legendary ladies. 

 

Dima's 'Eri tu' was just as magnificent on every count, his long phrases and dynamic attentiveness paying high rewards. In the heartbreak of 'O dolcezze perdute', Dima's sense of tenderness and regret spoke directly to me on a personal level, and he capped the aria with a gloriously velvety final phrase. In this scene both singers gave some of the very best Verdi singing I have ever heard and Maestro Armiliato sustained and abetted them every step of the way.

The final scene from ONEGIN was a vocal and emotional knock-out, each singer totally immersed in the drama with the urgency of Dima's desperation finally compelling a confession from his Tatyana. Sondra used her spine-tingling piani to heart-rending effect, sweeping off with a titanic top note of dismissal and leaving Dima to his despair.

As a last-straw intrusion of modern life into peerless musical artistry, a cellphone went off during the silence preceding Onegin's final lines. Yet another moment of the triumph of indifference: "my phone call is more important than Tchaikovsky." People are so thoughtless.

But anyway, the show must go on and it did as Sondra finally 'located' the maestro for an encore. She announced that she was heading to Denver to sing her first Tosca on the morrow and gave us a tantalizing sample of her next Met role with the 'Vissi d'arte' which was both a vocal and emotional experience to savor. No other soprano that I'm aware of these days can touch Sondra for expressive phrasing - that deeply feminine sense of vulnerability runs like a golden thread thru all her singing - and her top register is simply incandescent. Her Tosca at the Met will be a must-hear experience - I can always close my eyes on the dreaded brick walls of the Bondy staging.      

Dima looked terribly slender, almost waspish, in his tux and he's let the famous silver hair grow out long again. It struck me what a magnificently sexy vampire he would make. His encore was a haunting a cappella Russian song in which his breath control and the seamless gradations of piano/pianissimo held the house spellbound.

We'd hoped for a duet encore as well but perhaps Sondra had a plane to catch; despite fervent applause, the two singers and conductor took a final bow and then waved goodbye to the still-hungry crowd.  

The announced programme had threatened three Verdi overtures plus the PAGLIACCI intermezzo, but in the event Maestro Armiliato opened with a swift-paced NOZZE overture and later gave us LUISA MILLER in which the clarinetist Cheryl Hill styled her solo passages with dulcet tone and impressive breath control. In the PAG entr'acte, the horns were magnificent but they were less successful in the concluding ONEGIN scene. As a former horn player I can attest: it's a wicked instrument to play. But I loved it and still love the sound.

The upper reaches of Carnegie are terribly uncomfortable, there is hardly any leg room and the seats are narrow and you are squeezed in by neighbors. The steps are deep and steeply raked making them difficult to navigate, especially for older folks - a category I am joining against my will.

While it is untrue that I tried to dissuade Dame Nellie Melba from tackling the SIEGFRIED Brunnhilde and that I was onstage as a sailor when Nordica sang her last Met Isolde, it is true that tonight's concert was at least in part my idea. While working at Tower I suggested a disc of Verdi soprano/baritone duets featuring Sondra and Dima to a certain conductor (not Maestro Armiliato). This conductor asked me for a list of repertoire and I jotted down NABUCCO, ERNANI, DUE FOSCARI, MACBETH and BOCCANEGRA in addition to the familiar TRAVIATA, TROVATORE and AIDA. My suggestion was to end the disc with the Courting Scene from FALSTAFF. The conductor came back a couple days later to say that Dima liked the idea but was too busy at the moment to take on another project. Of course, the disc was never made but at least tonight's concert gave a sample of what might have been. 

Comments

[Dmitry]

I agree!

That a cappella encore, "Night," is a favorite of Dima's. He sings it at many recitals. Here's a youtube from a 1990 recital:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNLvKu0YQvs

[Sibyl]

Oh how I envy you! I missed their shared Trovatores at SFO (although I did get to see her and was blown away) and have been grinding my teeth in frustration ever since. I do love my life but I would gladly trade it for yours every so often; thankfully you write about it, for which thanks!

[Philip]

Sibyl, hopefully there will be recordings of the concert floating around. Sondra & Dmitry are in a very small echelon of singers these days who have utterly distinctive and identifiable voices as well as the interpretive instincts to best serve the music and make it exciting. In that regard they are throwbacks to the wonderful time when I was first going to the opera.

[Philip]

Thanks for the link, Dmitry. If anything he sings it even more beautifully now.

[fazed111]

Thanks for the fantastic and detailed review - much appreciated by those who only wish they could have been there!! There is an upcoming duo CD being released on Delos by Dima and Sondra, recorded live at a concert in Moscow.

[Barbara Goulter]

premieropera also has a CD of the Carnegie Hall recital. And a high quality DVD of the stupendous Dima-Kaufmann Moscow concert of December 2008.