DMITRI HVOROSTOVSKY RACHMANINOV ROMANCES IVARI ILJA, piano SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873–1943) 1 We shall rest ( My otdokhnjom) , Op. 26/3 2’32 2 Do you remember the evening? ( Ty pomnish’ li vecher?) (1893) 2’59 3 Oh no, I beg you, do not leave! ( O, net, molju, ne ukhodi!), Op. 4/1 1’49 4 Morning ( Utro) , Op. 4/2 2’28 5 In the silence of the mysterious night ( V molchan’ji nochi tajnoj) , Op. 4/3 2’51 2 6 Oh you, my corn field! ( Uzh ty, niva moja!) , Op. 4/5 4’47 7 My child, you are beautiful as a flower ( Ditja! Kak cvetok ty prekrasna) , Op. 8/2 2’14 8 A dream ( Son) , Op. 8/5 1’30 9 I was with her ( Ja byl u nej) , Op. 14/4 1’28 10 I am waiting for you (Ja zhdu tebja) , Op. 14/1 1’58 11 Do not believe me, my friend ( Ne ver mne drug) , Op. 14/7 1’41 12 She is as beautiful as noon ( Ona, kak polden’, khorosha) , Op. 14/9 3’05 13 Spring waters (Vesennije vody ), Op. 14/11 2’15 14 In my soul (V mojej dushe) , Op. 14/10 3’08 15 It is time! (Pora!), Op. 14/12 1’58 16 They replied (Oni otvechali) , Op. 21/4 1’58 17 An excerpt from Alfred de Musset ( Otryvok iz A. Mjusse) , Op. 21/6 2’17 18 How nice this place is ( Zdes’ khorosho) , Op. 21/7 2’10 19 How much it hurts (Kak mne bol’no) , Op. 21/12 1’50 20 Everything I had ( Vsjo otnjal u menja) , Op. 26/2 1’25 21 Yesterday we met ( Vchera my vstretilis’) , Op. 26/13 2’54 22 Everything passes (Prokhodit vse) , Op. 26/15 2’07 23 Sad night (Noch’ pechal’na) , Op. 26/12 2’27 3 24 Once again, I am alone (Ja opjat’ odinok) , Op. 26/9 2’04 25 At the gates of the holy cloister ( U vrat obiteli svjatoj) (1890) 3’36 26 Christ is risen! ( Khristos voskres) , Op. 26/6 3’27 DMITRI HVOROSTOVSKY , baritone IVARI ILJA , piano Publishers: Sikorski (tracks 1, 2, 25), Boosey & Hawkes Executive Producer: Reijo Kiilunen Recording: Moscow State Conservatory, Great Hall, 13.–24.7.2011 P 2012 Ondine Oy, Helsinki Recording Producer: Vladimir Kopcov C 2012 Ondine Oy, Helsinki Sound Engineers: Dmitrij Kovyzhenko, Aleksej Meshhanov Booklet Editor: Jean-Christophe Hausmann Mixing and Mastering: Ruslana Oreshnikova Photos: Pavel Antonov (Hvorostovsky), George Grantham Bain Piano Technician: Mihail Romanenko Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Rachmaninov) Technical support: Sergej Dolgov, Mihail Malkin, Mihail Spasskij Design: Eduardo Gomez Sergei Rachmaninov (1923) ergei Rachmaninov composed over eighty songs, from his earliest years to his full maturity, which show increasing mastery of the medium. His preferred texts were taken from Russian romantic Spoets which allowed him to display his gift for memorable, long-spanned melodies and opulent, sometimes illustrative piano parts. His earliest surviving songs were written in 1890, at the age of 17 (by which time he had already essayed piano works and orchestral pieces), while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory. They included At the gates of the holy cloister , which is a setting of Lermontov’s poem ‘The Beggar’. The melodic invention is already personal, the feeling for vocal writing obvious, though the piano accompaniment is relatively conventional. Rachmaninov’s first published song-collection, the Six Songs op. 4, which he also referred to as Romances , appeared in 1893 following the success of his opera Aleko , and included another very early song, In the silence of the mysterious night , to a poem by the romantic poet Afanasy Fet, composed in October 1890. This has remained one of his most popular songs: Rachmaninov himself liked it so much 5 that in 1922 he made a new version for voice, violin and piano – the violin obbligato composed by his friend Fritz Kreisler. The other songs of op. 4 were composed between 1891 and 1893 and are characterized by broad, lyrical themes, a wide dynamic range, and intricate, contrapuntal passages. The opening bars of No. 1, Oh no, I beg you, do not leave! , seem to recall the slow movement of Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto, while No. 2, Morning , written in 1891 while he was convalescing at the house of his fellow student Yuri Sakhnovsky (to whom it is dedicated), is a more positive utterance. No. 5, Oh you, my corn field , dates from the summer of 1893 and is one of the earliest songs to evoke the atmosphere of Russian folk song, with its frequent time changes and modal harmony. The words are by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, a distant cousin of Lev Tolstoy and an important writer in his own right, whose verses also provided the basis for Do you remember the evening? , another song from summer 1893 that was not included in op. 4. Rachmaninov seldom set words by non-Russian poets, but his op. 8, which dates from the Autumn of this same fecund song writing year of 1893, is a set of six songs to translations of German and Ukrainian texts in translations by Alexei Pleshcheyev. Three of these are settings of the mordant North German poet Heinrich Heine. No. 2, My child, you are beautiful as a flower has a tremulous beauty that perfectly matches the poem, while No. 5, A dream , is among the finest of Rachmaninov’s early songs. Here he holds the apparently artless simplicity of the vocal line in perfect counterpoise with the elaboration of the accompaniment (which nevertheless is never too assertive), the whole within an entirely satisfying form. After op. 8 Rachmaninov tended to issue his songs in larger collections, accumulated over several years. The 12 songs of op. 14 were written between 1894 and 1896, the earliest of them being No. 1, Davidova’s I am waiting for you , composed only a few months after the last of the op. 8 songs. Though its yearning vocal line, depicting a woman anxiously awaiting her lover, has a quality of simple lyricism, the piano accompaniment begins sensitively but becomes perhaps too powerfully rhetorical in the closing bars. Indeed the set as a whole – almost all of them songs of sorrow or lament – is uneven in quality, and in several the piano accompaniments are complex and full of bravura writing, threatening sometimes to overwhelm the singer. Here Rachmaninov’s gifts as a virtuoso pianist are only too obviously on display. Some, such as the colourful and exciting No. 4, I was with her , and the cheerful No. 7, Do not believe me, friend , are reminiscent 6 of Tchaikovsky, whereas others are more individual. In No. 9, She is as beautiful as noon and No. 10, In my soul , both of them settings of poems by a contemporary, Minsky (the pseudonym of the poet and revolutionary Nikola Mikhailovich Vilenkin), Rachmaninov creates an exotic, oriental colouring while evoking a distinctive atmosphere of hopelessness with great skill. The tumultuous No. 11, Spring waters (more correctly ‘The floods of spring’) may be Rachmaninov’s most famous song. Composed in 1896 to a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev, it rejoices in an almost orchestral, highly virtuosic piano accompaniment: it was apt that he should dedicate it to his former piano teacher Anna Ornatskaya. The undulating texture and fluid line evoke the energy and changeability of a flowing river, building to thrilling climaxes. The set ends with No. 12, It is time , to a poem by Semyon Nadson, a rousing appeal for aid to the people in a time of trouble. The next few years were difficult ones for Rachmaninov, beginning with the notorious critical failure of his First Symphony in 1897 and a long, crippling depression only surmounted in 1901 by the composition and triumphant reception of his Second Piano Concerto. There are few songs from these years, and he only returned to song writing in earnest in the Spring of 1902, around the time of his marriage to Natalya Satina. The resulting 12 Songs op. 21 are generally acknowledged to be among his most spontaneous utterances. No. 4, They replied , which sets a translation of a poem by Victor Hugo, contains another depiction of surging waters in the obsessive arpeggios of the piano accompaniment. Another translation, from the French poet, playwright and novelist Alfred de Musset, provides the starting-point for No. 6, An excerpt from Alfred de Musset , a song about the torment of loneliness, which Rachmaninov clothes in appropriately dark-hued music. Op. 21 also marks a new and subtler stage in his integration of vocal and piano lines. This feature is obvious in No. 7, How nice this place is , to verses by the poetess Glafira Galina, where the exquisite vocal line is wedded to an accompaniment of rare refinement and delicacy. It describes a pastoral scene where young lovers have come to be alone with nature and themselves, and Rachmaninov actually composed it while on honeymoon with Natalya. No. 12, the concluding number of the set, How much it hurts , another Galina setting, is remarkable for the intensity of emotion it conveys. The set of 15 Songs, op. 26 which Rachmaninov completed in 1906 takes his integration of vocal melody and accompaniment yet further, the piano sometimes taking over or filling in gaps in the vocal line so that the two are closely interwoven in a single melodic continuum. No. 2, Everything I had , to words by Fyodor Tyutchev is a brief utterance, starting in dramatic vein but soon turning more lyrical as we discover that 7 the protagonist has lost everything, including his health, as punishment by God.