Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
CD Reviews
If, as Anton Rubinstein argued, 'song (romance) is the only musical genre to have a homeland',1then Russian song might appear to be terra incognita for many Western audiences (and not a few Russian ones too). Despite being a form in which nearly all major Russian composers have worked (Scriabin being a notable exception), record companies have devoted far less attention to this crucial part of the repertoire than they have to, say, the French and German traditions. To be sure, there are some notable exceptions to this state of affairs, some driven by the reputation of star performers, others by the status of particular composers. 2A recent recording of songs by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov performed by Anna Netrebko and Daniel Barenboim recalls earlier anthologies by figures such as Olga Borodina, Galina Gorchakova and Dmitry Hvorostovsky. Younger singers, too, have often chosen to make their recorded debut with an anthology of Russian songs, as in the case of Ekaterina Semenchuk or Daniil Shtoda, both graduates of the Mariinsky Theatre's academy for young singers. Major composer-led recordings might include sets of the complete songs of Prokofiev and Shostakovich (both on Delos), or Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov (both on Brilliant Classics). That all of the singers involved in these recordings are Russian testifies to the evident difficulty for foreign singers in overcoming a difficult and unfamiliar language (although this barrier is often overstated, and has not, in any case, prevented non-Russian artists from taking on such roles as Tatyana and Onegin in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, or Germann and Lisa in the same composer's Queen of Spades). A Russian mother gave Elisabeth Söderström a natural advantage when it came to making her pioneering recording of Rachmaninoff's complete songs (as well as anthologies of selected works by other composers). Of non-Russian performers, Joan Rodgers stands out for her commitment to the Russian repertoire; and a recent recital disc of Tchaikovsky romances by Christianne Stotijn is an impressive demonstration what can be achieved by a singer without a native command of the language, but with a fine ear and an ability to enter into the acoustic and emotional world of Russian poetry. A number of scholarly and...