He strikes an imposing picture with his snow white hair and slim figure. (I'm into white hair myself!)
His fine pianist was Ivari Ilja who collaborated beautifully throughout the program.
He opened the concert with two groups of songs by Mikhail Glinka and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The songs were slight and too much alike to have that many in a row. They also made no vocal demands of Mr. Hvorostovsky. All were in the middle range of his voice and none was longer than three minutes.
Frankly, I thought to myself, "Is this all there is?"
After the intermission we had songs by Tchaikovsky and Strauss. Now that's a whole different ball game.
Suddenly with stronger music and texts, his voice came alive and showed different colors and a much wider vocal range. He certainly has good control of his entire range and was able to become emotionally involved in the lyrics. This was a very different singer from the first half of the concert.
I know that some singers like to start out easily and give the voice a chance to warm up, but thirty minutes of small pieces is too much. His second group should have been stronger musically and vocally.
Once he was into the Tchaikovsky and Strauss you could hear why he is considered one of the great baritones on the current scene. It was very exciting singing and playing.
Bravi!
