It is always quite an emotional experience to spend some time in one of Europe's oldest concert halls, a place where musicians like Handel and Mozart used to play and where, I think, they would have been happy to be still last Friday for the concert given by Sergei Leiferkus and Semion Skigin in a very diverse selection of Russian songs. From the funny "Pride" by Borodin from a text by Tolstoy, to the magical world of "The Sleeping Princess", still by Borodin, to the very dark pages written by Mussorgsky in his series "Songs and Dances of Death". Some harmonies there already announce the musical revolutions of the 1900s with chords reminiscent of Schönberg's Gurrelieder or some of Debussy's or Ravel's pages (who will later orchestrate The Pictures at an Exhibition), some others remind us of Schubert's Winterreise. It is pleasant to listen to Moussorgsky's original music as he has so much suffered -or being blessed?- by the orchestration or the re-orchestration of his work.
The concert was just a succession of one beautiful song after another: tender or sad beauty or completely dark or funny from poems written by Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, Golenishchev-Kutuzov and sung with great clarity. The best concert I have heard this year, by far.
The concert was just a succession of one beautiful song after another: tender or sad beauty or completely dark or funny from poems written by Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, Golenishchev-Kutuzov and sung with great clarity. The best concert I have heard this year, by far.