SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Dmitri Hvorostovsky: Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Constantine Orvelian, conductor; Academy of Choral Art Choir, Moscow; Style of 5 Folk Ensemble. Cal Performances, Zellerbach Hall, University of California at Berkeley, 4.11.2007 (HS)

Silver-maned, golden-voiced Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovky brought some of his Russian friends on his United States tour, but the results in this concert Sunday afternoon were decidedly mixed. The all-Russian program made for quite a show, even if opera lovers and concert goers familiar with his soulful renditions of arias and classic Russian songs doubtless left feeling short-changed. After a first half that started with Russian religious music mixed with three of Hvorostovsky's signature operatic arias, the second half veered off into what one might call Russki Pops.

Gotta sell those "Moscow Nights" and "I Met You, My Love" CDs, whence came much of the music in the second half. Given the quality of what transpired in the first half of the concert, it seemed an awful waste of talent, not just the baritone's, but the chorus' and orchestra's as well.

Not that there weren't some nice moments. A medley of Russian folk songs featured the two balalaika players and an accordionist of appealing sensitivity and vitality from Style of 5, a St. Petersburg-based crossover group. The piece that opened the second half, "In Memory of Sergey Yasenin" by Vera Gorodovskaya, was a moving chorale, featuring the Academy of Choral Art Choir from Moscow. But the Russian pop tunes that concluded the concert found the handsome baritone crooning into a microphone and smiling coyly at the audience, not what he does best. It reminded me of Celine Dion's Las Vegas show without the visual backgrounds to distract us from the banality of the music.

In the first half, though, Hvorostovsky displayed his signature sound and mesmerizing breath control on Gryaznoy's aria from Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride, the letter aria "Vi mne pisali" from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and best of all, Price Yeletsky's aria from Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades. I have heard him sing this maybe a half dozen times, and each time he gets more of an arc, more richness into the long lines, often singing two phrases on one breath. It made a stunning closer to the first half.

The choir opened the program alone with a lovely if somewhat bland a capella piece, "Cherubim Song," and sang along with Hvorostovsky in three pretty but ultimately forgettable a capella religious works. With the orchestra, they also interspersed between the arias two lively choruses from Tchaikovsky operas, the Act I dance from Onegin and the Act III brindisi from Queen of Spades, during which it became apparent that they needed to be amplified (somewhat hollowly) to compete even with this downsized orchestra.

In the end, I left with one question. Was it worth it to come inside on bright, warm Northern California Sunday in autumn to hear three golden arias and long stretches of forgettable music? The answer: Only for those who rarely get to hear a voice of this dimension.

Harvey Steiman

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