Something magical happened during Dmitri Hvorostovsky's recital at Davies Symphony Hall on Sunday. Twice.
Voice recitals can be good, bad, or indifferent — even all three, coming and going. But the quest is for a peak experience, when the performance goes beyond that pedestrian matrix. And that's what happened Sunday ... not once, but twice.
I have heard Hvorostovsky, 48, a dozen times, beginning with his U.S. debut in San Diego some 20 years ago, but — after that initial discovery — I haven't seen him in a performance this musically and artistically impressive.
Beyond the double magic, there was also the startlingly different nature of those happenings. First, it was something very big: the romantic rapture of Franz Liszt's Petrarca Sonnet "Pace non trovo" (I find no peace). Later it was Tchaikovsky's small, utterly simple "Snova, kak prezhde, odin" (Again, as before, I am alone).
Hvorostovsky — not always a quiet, intimate communicator — virtually spoke the Tchaikovsky song, conveying its deep melancholy, without posing, without visible or audible effort. It was the kind of affecting performance you wish would be followed by silence, but no such luck with a noisy audience that interrupted with applause at every possible moment, between songs of a cycle, and even before the pianist could conclude the piece.
That was a shame all the more because Hvorostovsky's accompanist, Estonian Ivari Ilja, was both a superb pianist and a true partner to the singer. In the Liszt, there are three important solo passages for the piano, and Ilja played them with special brilliance.
The baritone launched into this Liszt song-symphony with power and certainty: "I hold nothing, though I embrace the whole world." Then as that introductory verse flowed into the main theme — "Love has me in a prison" — hearts melted and even the constant audience chatter and coughs ceased. It was an extraordinary performance, maintained through the final, Verdian outburst: "To this I have come, my lady, because of you."
The main theme of this song is the best known and most frequently used Liszt (by the composer in other works and a hundred film soundtracks), but even avid music fans have trouble identifying "Pace non trovo" as the source.
The Liszt, of course, uses the text of 14th-century poet Francesco Petrarca, but in an unusual and unfortunate omission by the San Francisco Symphony program editors, no text was identified for any of the songs, song titles were not translated, and the translators for the texts were credited only in one place, in the tiniest possible type: they are Mariya Kaganskaya and Alla Gladysheva. The poet for Tchaikovsky's Six Romances, Op. 73, is Daniil Maksimovich Ratgauz.
Besides being in good voice and good mood, Hvorostovsky also gave one of his most varied programs. No usual Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov here (not that there is anything wrong with them), but the miniature gems of the Tchaikovsky cycle, two of the Three Petrarca Sonnets, the other being "I' vidi in terra angelici costumi" (I beheld angelic grace on earth), four songs by Gabriel Fauré, and five by Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915).
Variety was enhanced by the unusual lineup of encores: "Credo" from Verdi's Otello, the Russian folksong "Farewell Happiness," and Aleko's Cavatina from the Rachmaninov opera.
Of the Fauré songs, the best performances were of "Automne," Op. 18, No. 3 (to text by Paul-Armand Silvestre), and "Silvie," Op. 6, No. 3 (to text by Paul de Choudens) — with solid diction and artistry.
Tanayev, composer and pianist, a friend of Tchaikovsky, doesn't get the exposure in the West he deserves. These songs, similar to his string quartets and opera Oresteia, are important, lasting works.
Standouts at the recital were "Ljudi spjat" (People are asleep), Op. 17, No. 10 (to text by Afanasy Afanas'yevich Fet) — with Ilja's piano giving a voice to the nightingale — and "Menuet," Op. 26, No. 9 (to text by Lev L'vovich Kobylinsky).