Dmitri Hvorostovsky has a polished stage presence - almost too much so. Though by his own admission he's a nervous performer, he doesn't so much give to the audience as assume that they will take whatever he offers. But behind the "because I'm worth it" looks there's a true musician with a remarkable voice, and to hear a really fine Russian singer perform Russian music is something special. Hvorostovsky has a seemingly bottomless depth of tone and he glides up and down his extensive range betraying no weak points of technique. Though in this challenging recital we had to wait until the very end to hear him at his magical best, there was plenty to intrigue the audience along the way.
Three songs by Glinka, regarded as the father of Russian composition, made an interesting start. Doubt, a setting of a poem by Kukolnik, found Hvorostovsky on expressive, lyrical form, though the atmosphere was jolted a little by his too-audible gasps for breath.
After the hailstorm of consonants that was Glinka's Travelling Song, Mahler's Kindertotenlieder called for a swift change of mood. Hvorostovsky put some new colours onto his palette, opening the cycle with a flatter, resigned tone and moving to a barely-there, floated sound for the close. These songs are usually heard with orchestra, and the sparser sound of the solo piano highlighted the mournful, slender counterpoint. Mikhail Arkadiev, the accompanist, couldn't quite get around the piano fast enough to come near reproducing the orchestral depiction of a storm in the final song, but the eerie music-box accompaniment in the last verse was haunting.
Shostakovich's Suite on Verses of Michelangelo, written 25 years ago in the composer's penultimate year, comes from the same dark world. This is an intensely moving work, and Hvorostovsky will do it full justice when he no longer needs to read it from a music stand. His communication with the audience lost its edge because of this obstacle, leaving room for Arkadiev to come into his own, thundering, hanging back, holding tension and, at times, violently reminding the audience that the piano is indeed a percussion instrument. The tick-tock of chords that closed the final song, Immortality, was followed by the first real silence of the evening from a previously restless audience.
The lengthy applause that broke it brought Hvorostovsky back to more familiar territory, in true performing mode. His encores were both by Tchaikovsky - the wistful In the Din of the Ball followed by a real treat, Yeletsky's aria from Queen of Spades, sung as lovingly and sincerely as it should be, sending the audience home on air.
