Pushkin Romances (CD) – Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Composers: Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomyzhskiy, Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Cesar Cui, Nikolai Medtner, Alexander Vlasov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Georgi Sviridov
Artists: Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ivari Ilja
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Delos
CD Release Date: April 5, 2010

This album offers seventeen songs, or “romances,” all composed to texts from works of Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet. The composers represented here have helped define the true meaning of the Russian Romance and have created some of the world’s greatest song literature.

Operatic superstar Dmitri Hvorostovsky has become the supreme interpreter of the Russian Romance, with its rich resource of music and poetry.

“...Bringing them all to life is Hvorsotovsky’s performance – passionate, brooding or forceful with Pushkin’s flowing lines, in a manner which might be a bit overpowering in less emotional music but is exactly right for these songs.... [His] dark baritone has lost remarkably little of the suave sheen that distinguished his 1990s romance collections (Philips), and his word-sense and diction remain exemplary.... Estonian Ivari Ilja is an equally spirited accompanist.” (BBC Music Magazine)

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