Songs by Tchaikovsky - Rachmaninoff - Sviridov
with Oxana Isaeva (piano)
The last (and only previous) time I heard Daniil Shtoda sing, it was as Lensky in Eugene Onegin, and he was about 24 years old, give or take a year. I thought the voice lovely, but maybe a shade underpowered, as yet. Now he's 37, the voice is still lovely, and although there was no real question of power involved in a recital of Russian art-songs, I don't think there's anything lacking there anymore either.
In the context of a lunchtime series of concerts focused on the chamber music of Tchaikovsky, Shtoda opened the proceedings with this carefully selected and very well-presented selection of songs. Wisely, he chose not to devote his whole hour to Tchaikovsky. While there are many fine Tchaikovsky songs, there are also many that are either fairly inconsequential, or else inhabit too-similar worlds to make for a suitably varied diet. Shtoda chose six songs, four from the prolific mid-1870s (which also saw, for example, the above-mentioned Eugene Onegin, and the 3rd and 4th symphonies), and two from the very end of his life, including the desolate "Again, as before, alone". I do think this is a song better suited to a darker voice, but the bleak anguish came through very well. However, the pick of the bunch was the elegant Tolstoy setting, "In the Midst of the Ball", Shtoda's bright yet soft timbre beautifully conveying the mood of wistful reverie.
If Tchaikovsky wrote songs throughout his career, Rachmaninoff's, fewer in number, are concentrated into the 20 or so years from the end of his student days to his self-imposed exile from Russia. They are also generally far stronger than the great majority of Tchaikovsky's songs, partly because the piano parts are systematically more involving, more thought-out and more demanding than anything Tchaikovsky wrote for his songs. Tchaikovsky wrote accompaniments; Rachmaninoff wrote partnerships. While Oxana Isaeva did not in any way detract from Shtoda's presentation, she did not make the kind of significant contribution that would have given that added degree of lustre to the performance. Of the five Rachmaninoff songs, she provided the strongest support for the most famous, "Do not sing, my beauty", with its oriental melisma, and a suggestion of the arpeggiated chords of the gusli, while Shtoda's voice ached with homesickness and loss. However, in the exquisite "Lilacs", while he amply conveyed the evanescence of happiness, Isaeva could not bring the heady yet subtle perfume of the flowers to life in the same way.
The last group of three songs (plus a lively encore) were by Georgy Sviridov, a Soviet-era composer not broadly known in the West. Sviridov was a pupil of Shostakovich, but his personal style ended up less radical, and certainly less confrontational than his teacher's. Furthermore, he had no problems with the authorities; his natural inclinations in terms of compositional style and content did not, apparently, bring him into conflict with the regime, and he led a long and highly successful career. It is perhaps this that has partly caused his neglect in the West. We tend to be a little suspicious of those who prospered under Soviet rule. However, Sviridov's songs in particular are being increasingly defended by Russian singers abroad, and rightly gaining an ever-widening public outside of his homeland. The two outer songs here were strongly folk-inspired, while the central one, "The nightingale has a fine song" was a more dramatic piece, ironic and a little bitter, with a drink-and-be-merry-while-young climax flung in the face of the audience with an edge of angry hopelessness to it.
There were fleeting imperfections in Shtoda's singing - a touch of gravel once or twice to mar the smoothness of tone (but he was singing in Scotland, it comes with the territory!), one or two notes with slightly uncertain pitch - but not enough to disturb our enjoyment of this clear, silvery instrument, with its effortless flow, almost imperceptible breathing, and the precise yet easy diction. It's when you hear a Russian singing in his own language like this that you realise just how difficult it is for anyone else to cope, for there was a lightness here, a transparency where others seem, even with the best will in the world, to get a little tangled, the vowels confused or the consonants over-emphasised. Although the predominant mood of the selection was redolent of Slavic melancholy, there were nicely graded variations of it, and the whole was well-balanced, and completely absorbing. A rewarding experience indeed.
[Next : 21st February]
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