Friday 21 October 2011 7.30pm
Barbican Hall
Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Songs by Fauré, Taneyev, Liszt
and Tchaikovsky
Pavel Antonov
Dmitri Hvorostovsky baritone
Ivari Ilja piano
tonight’s programme
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)
Automne, Op. 18 No. 3
Sylvie, Op. 6 No. 3
Après un rêve, Op. 7 No. 1
Fleur jetée, Op. 39 No. 2
Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev (1856–1915)
All are sleeping, Op. 17 No. 10
Menuet, Op. 26 No. 9
Not the wind, blowing from the heights, Op. 17 No. 5
The winter road, Op. 32 No. 4
Stalactites, Op. 26 No. 6
The restless heart is beating, Op. 17 No. 9
Franz Liszt (1811–86)
Oh! Quand je dors
Petrarch Sonnets – Pace non trovo;
I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93)
Six Romances, Op. 73
Interval: 20 minutes
Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Vertec Printing Services; advertising by Cabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450)
Please make sure that all digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched off during the performance. In
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programme note
Such sweet sorrow – the European art song
The European art song is pre-eminently a 19th-century
invention, which is not to say that composers hadn’t written
songs in earlier periods, but they had never do so with such
prodigality or for such a specific set of social and cultural
circumstances.
Socially, we might look for an explanation in the rise of a
musically literate bourgeoisie who wished to make music
at home both for pleasure and to impress friends and
neighbours with their artistic sophistication. The poems that
would become Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, for example,
were written by Wilhelm Müller, a young amateur poet, for
a group of high-spirited music-lovers in Berlin who were
looking for a Liederspiel to perform together. They met at the
home of a distinguished Prussian civil servant who nurtured
a deep commitment to the arts, Friedrich August von
Stägemann, and the company included Achim von Arnim,
one of the two men who gathered together the collection
of poems published as Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the
painter Wilhelm Hensel, who would marry Mendelssohn’s
sister Fanny, and Ludwig Rellstab, whose poems Schubert
would set as the first part of Schwanengesang. As these
Berlin friends sing their tale of the miller’s daughter, here’s
a clear case of amateur and professional music-making
overlapping, though such a clear-cut distinction might
have puzzled Müller and his friends.
Publishers were quick to respond to this new market for
songs to be sung at home, while composers were eager
to get their music out to an enthusiastic and well-informed
audience. Here, too, was an opportunity to augment their
earnings. The unstoppable rise of the modern piano also
plays its part in this history, with ever more elaborately cased
and carved instruments, grand and upright, gracing even
relatively modest drawing rooms: pianos that were for
playing, never merely for decoration.
If the cultural background to the rise of the art song is about
social class and economics, supply and demand, there is
surely a political story here as well that is neatly encapsulated
in two words: Lied and mélodie. It is difficult to define either
of these with any precision and the English translation
‘song’ is clearly an oversimplification that ignores important
differences in meaning and in the local understanding of two
parallel but distinct traditions. But to hear a composer such as
Franz Liszt, three of whose songs feature in tonight’s recital,
commute between these two traditions while also travelling
south to Italy and the canzonetta is to perceive that difference
without necessarily being able to articulate it as precisely as
one might like to. For here is a composer who reminds us that
you can change your national style as easily as exchanging
a silk shirt for the Abbé’s soutane.
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programme note
However, Lied and mélodie both offer clues about national
identity and national cultural practice. As far as the latter
is concerned, the Lied is for a different kind of public
performance from the mélodie, which seems rooted in
the idea of the salon and the tradition of the Parisian
musical soirée, exemplified by Rossini’s samedi soirs at
his apartment in the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin in the first
half of the 19th century.
the citizen’s rights rather than the subject’s duties. So in
Germany Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim were
working as the musical equivalents of the Brothers Grimm
and collecting together popular songs in Des Knaben
Wunderhorn, cataloguing part of a specifically German
cultural heritage. Russian composers, too, were using folk
material to create art songs just a step or so further along the
road to constructing a distinct national musical identity.
National identity would seem to take its cue from the
restoration of the old political order at the Congress of
Vienna after Napoleon had finally been defeated on
the field at Waterloo in 1815 and exiled to St Helena.
The restoration of the Bourbons, the consolidation of the
autocracies in Russia, Austria and Prussia – and even to
an extent in Britain – left those who had subscribed to the
revolutionary ideals of ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ at a loss.
Bonaparte may have destroyed the ideals of the Revolution
when he crowned himself Emperor in Notre-Dame cathedral
in 1804, but the wars he waged had promised political
liberation as well as glory for France. For men and women
who had once thought, as Wordsworth so potently described
it, ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive / But to be young was
very heaven’, the rediscovery of a lost or concealed national
identity in music and literature might have been a prelude to
new kinds of political arrangements that acknowledged
For the rulers of the restored anciens régimes, cultural
nationalism also had its charms, with the assertion of a
distinct national identity offering a way to bind the people
even closer to the state – a form of political control if you will.
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So the rise of the art song through the 19th century, as well as
the collection of folk songs, is intimately bound up with the
politics of national identity. And we need to tune our ears to
composers striving to respond in a personal style to those
politics. Romantic passion fulfilled or thwarted, moonlight,
dark despair, solitary walks along the shore or through
woods and forests may be the common currency of many of
these songs, but the tone varies, depending on the nationality
of the composer.
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) is the master of French mélodie.
A pupil of Saint-Saëns, he took the salon song written by an
earlier generation of Parisian composers under the influence
programme note
of Gounod and transformed it into a highly sophisticated
communication that was above all intimate and personal.
Indeed, the sense you get, particularly in Fauré’s late mélodies,
of a composer talking directly to a single listener is perhaps
one of the distinctive features of the French tradition. Automne
was written when Fauré was 33 and if the restless opening in
the piano part signals a particular season – the rainy squalls
of October – the song develops into a meditation on memory
and above all the passing of time. Regretful thoughts of blue
remembered hills when youth smiled dominate the middle
stanza. But there is no escaping the cold judgement of the
postlude to this great song. Time has passed.
Sylvie is an early song composed for Fauré’s first set of
published songs. It is all charm and – in its evident pleasure
in the company of sweet Sylvie – uniquely Gallic. There’s a
playful teasing sexuality here, but nothing that might cause
offence. This is a song with both hands still on the piano in
the salon, with the fluttering bird in the piano part for the
first two stanzas affording the gifted amateur a splendid
opportunity to show off his or her skills at the instrument.
The seamless legato of the narrative in Après un rêve, written
in 1877, is again unmistakably French, present in so many of
Debussy’s mélodies and Duparc’s handful of masterpieces,
with the vocal line and the piano part as perfectly matched
as a hand and wrist in the softest kid glove buttoned to the
elbow. No wonder the singer yearns for the return of
mysterious night, the kingdom of dreams in the final lines
of the mélodie. There all was well, all was whole: ‘I dreamed
of happiness’.
Fleur jetée is one of Fauré’s most popular songs. Yet it is
also atypical: there’s a drama here that edges on the
melodramatic, with the vocal part requiring an operatic
style of delivery. Is Saint-Saëns, Fauré’s mentor and
champion an influence, with the flower something that
Dalila might have abandoned? If there are quieter passing
beauties in the middle of this song – ‘stave-hopping’ is how
the pianist Graham Johnson has described them – it’s the
final vocal flourish and the mighty postlude that delight
most audiences.
Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev (1856–1915) studied composition
with Tchaikovsky and as a pianist gave the Moscow
premiere of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and the
Russian premiere of the Second. And it was he who
completed the Third after Tchaikovsky’s death. This close
creative partnership has perhaps overshadowed Taneyev’s
own achievements as a composer. If nothing else, however,
it places him in the debate that preoccupied every Russian
composer in the 19th century: whether to write music that
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programme note
looked inwards, to the nation’s own traditions, or outwards,
taking inspiration from western Europe. For the most part
Taneyev and Tchaikovsky looked West, Taneyev more firmly
than his teacher; but perhaps not surprisingly as he had been
befriended by Saint-Saëns while in Paris as a young man.
Taneyev was an intellectual who argued that music should
proceed from study and planning. So it comes as something
of a surprise that his songs have such musical spontaneity.
At least that is how they come across on the rare occasions
when they are performed. There’s a real chill in the piano
part of Stalactites and it’s clear that the composer relishes
the transformation of the frozen tears in the poem into
stalactites. If there is little but cold comfort in The winter
road, we can perhaps find a crumb of warmth from the
old woman who is imagined singing lullabies. In his choice
of texts Taneyev is indubitably Russian.
Franz Liszt (1811–86) is the most unclassifiable of all 19thcentury songwriters, happily commuting between a variety
of national styles. Quand je dors seems to be unmistakably
French. It was composed in 1842 and the subject of a
number of revisions over the next decade. The first of seven
poems by Victor Hugo that he would set between 1842
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and 1849, it is perhaps Liszt’s most admired song, with the
principal melody combining directness and emotional
intensity in equal measure. Yet this is also a song that signals
the ease with which Liszt, that most cosmopolitan of
composers, moved between different languages and
cultures. Who is it that is compared to the poet’s beloved
appearing by his bed as he sleeps? None other than
Petrarch’s Laura.
Liszt’s settings of Petrarch’s sonnets were the result of the time
that he spent in Italy with his mistress Marie d’Agoult in the
late 1830s. The couple read together the 366 poems that
the 14th-century Italian poet had addressed to his beloved
Laura. Here is poetry that speaks of the glory days of the
early Italian Renaissance, and of an Italy that spoke
eloquently to those who longed for a united nation under
one government. We’ll hear two of the three Petrarch sonnets
that Liszt set to music. Pace non trovo is packed with witty
paradoxes, ‘eyeless I gaze’ and ‘tongueless I cry out’ – the
madness of romantic love that turns the world inside out and
upside down – and the composer responds with a piano
part that stretches conventional harmonies to near breaking
point and juxtaposes dramatic vocal declamation with lyric
programme note
sensuousness. I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi suggests that
Laura is an angel come to earth, with a melodic line that
seems to defy gravity. Only in the closing bars are a series
of dazzling harmonic shifts set aside in a calm invocation
of the virtues that attend this earthly angel.
In his song-writing Tchaikovsky (1840–93) looked to Italy,
France and Germany for his models, but the results were
always Russian. Is this perhaps the tension that drives so
much of the composer’s music, the determination to bend
the musical traditions of Western Europe to his own Russian
purpose? Between 1869 and 1893 Tchaikovsky published
over 100 songs in carefully organised groups, usually six to
a set. Often the music is in a quite different class to the texts:
Tchaikovsky’s ear was as much tin as Richard Strauss’s when
it came to poetry!
In 1892 Daniil Rathaus, an amateur poet, sent the composer
a set of six poems. Tchaikovsky set to work and sketched the
vocal part for the first verse of We sat together and part of
The sun has set. But it would be another 10 months before he
returned to the poems, in May 1893. This short song-cycle is
the composer’s last completed work and it was dedicated to
the tenor who had created the part of Herman in The Queen
of Spades, Nikolay Figner. At the end of We sat together
the composer interposed one of his fate motifs as a
couple struggle to speak to each other. There is a mood
of melancholy throughout the set, the descending phrases
in the piano part for Night just a short step away from the
Sixth Symphony. On this moonlit night begins well enough
but the declaration of love at the heart of the poem is
tentative and somehow suffused with resignation. True,
there’s joy and a kind of ecstasy in the flowing piano part
of The sun has set. But Amid sombre days is restless, with
the vocal line running over a nagging piano part.
Remembered happiness cannot banish the gloom. All
that remains is loneliness and, in Again, as before, alone,
stoic resignation. Completely Tchaikovsky and every bit as
Russian as Fauré is French.
Programme note © Christopher Cook
For texts please see page 8.
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text
Gabriel Fauré
Automne, Op. 18 No. 3
Automne au ciel brumeux, aux horizons navrants,
Aux rapides couchants, aux aurores pâlies,
Je regarde couler, comme l’eau du torrent,
Tes jours faits de mélancolie.
Autumn
Autumn, time of misty skies and heartbreaking horizons,
Of rapid sunsets and pale dawns,
I watch your melancholy days
Flow past like a torrent.
Sur l’aile des regrets mes esprits emportés,
Comme s’il se pouvait que notre âge renaisse!
Parcourent, en rêvant, les coteaux enchantés,
Où jadis sourit ma jeunesse!
My thoughts borne off on the wings of regret,
As if our time could ever be repeated!
Dreamingly wander the enchanted slopes,
Where my youth once used to smile!
Je sens, au clair soleil du souvenir vainqueur,
Refleurir en bouquet les roses deliées,
Et monter à mes yeux des larmes, qu’en mon coeur,
Mes vingt ans avaient oubliées!
In the bright sunlight of triumphant memory,
I feel the scattered roses re-blooming in bouquets,
And tears well up in my eyes, tears which my heart,
at the age of twenty, had already forgotten!
Paul-Armand Silvestre (1837–1901)
Sylvie, Op. 6 No. 3
Si tu veux savoir, ma belle,
Où s’envole à tire d’aile
L’oiseau qui chantait sur l’ormeau,
Je te le dirai, ma belle,
Il vole vers qui l’appelle,
Vers celui-là
Qui l’aimera!
Sylvie
If you want to know, my beauty,
Where the bird that sang on the elm,
Flies swiftly on the wing,
I will tell you, my beauty:
He flies toward one who calls him,
Toward that one
Who will love him!
Si tu veux savoir, ma blonde,
Pourquoi sur terre, et sur l’onde
La nuit tout s’anime et s’unit,
Je te le dirai, ma blonde,
C’est qu’il est une heure au monde
Où, loin du jour,
Veille l’amour!
If you want to know, my blonde one,
Why, on land and over the waves
At night everything comes to life and unites,
I will tell you, my blonde one:
There is a time in the world
When, far from the day,
Love awakes!
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text
Si tu veux savoir, Sylvie,
Pourquoi j’aime à la folie
Tes yeux brillants et langoureux,
Je te le dirai, Sylvie,
C’est que sans toi dans la vie
Tout pour mon coeur
N’est que douleur!
If you want to know, Sylvie,
Why I so madly love
Your shining and languishing eyes,
I will tell you, Sylvie:
Without you in my life
Everything is, for my heart,
Only suffering!
Paul de Choudens (1850–1925)
Après un rêve, Op. 7 No. 1
Dans un sommeil que charmait ton image
Je rêvais le bonheur, ardent mirage,
Tes yeux étaient plus doux, ta voix pure et sonore,
Tu rayonnais comme un ciel éclairé par l’aurore;
After a dream
In a slumber spellbound by your image
I dreamed of happiness, passionate mirage,
Your eyes were softer, your voice pure and sonorous,
You shone like a sky lit up by the dawn;
Tu m’appelais et je quittais la terre
Pour m’enfuir avec toi vers la lumière,
Les cieux pour nous entr’ouvraient leurs nues,
Splendeurs inconnues, lueurs divines entrevues.
You called me and I left the earth
To run away with you towards the light,
The skies opened their clouds for us,
Unknown splendours, divine flashes glimpsed.
Hélas! Hélas! triste réveil des songes,
Je t’appelle, ô nuit, rends-moi tes mensonges,
Reviens, reviens radieuse,
Reviens, ô nuit mystérieuse!
Alas! Alas! sad awakening from dreams,
I call you, O night, give me back your lies,
Return, return radiant,
Return, O mysterious night!
Anonymous, trans. Romain Bussine (1830–99)
Fleur jetée, Op. 39 No. 2
Emporte ma folie
Au gré du vent,
Fleur en chantant cueillie
Et jetée en rêvant.
Emporte ma folie
Au gré du vent:
Discarded Flower
Carry off my folly
At the whim of the wind,
O flower which I picked while I sang
And threw away as I dreamed.
Carry off my folly
At the whim of the wind!
Comme la fleur fauchée
Périt l’amour:
La main qui t’a touchée
Fuit ma main sans retour.
Comme la fleur fauchée
Périt l’amour.
Like flowers scythed down,
Love dies:
The hand that once touched you
Now shuns my hand forever.
Like flowers scythed down,
Love dies.
Please turn page quietly
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text
Que le vent qui te sèche,
O pauvre fleur,
Tout à l’heure si fraîche
Et demain sans couleur,
Que le vent qui te sèche,
Sèche mon coeur!
May the wind that withers you,
O poor flower,
A moment ago so fresh
And tomorrow all faded.
May the wind that withers you
Wither my heart!
Paul-Armand Silvestre
Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev
Ljudi spjat, Op. 17 No. 10
Ljudi spjat; moj drug, pojdjom v tenistvyj sad.
Ljudi spjat, odni lish’ zvjozdy k nam gljadjat,
Da i te ne vidjat nas sredi vetvej,
I ne slyshat, slyshit tol’ko solovej …
Da i tot ne slyshit: pesn’ jevo gromka.
Razve slyshat tol’ko serdce da ruka.
Slyshit serdce, skol’ko radostej zemli,
Skol’ko schastija sjuda my prinesli.
Da ruka, uslysha, serdcu govorit,
Chto chuzhaja v nej pylajet i drozhit,
Chto i jej ot etoj drozhi gorjacho,
Chto k plechu nevol’no klonitsja plecho …
All are sleeping
All are sleeping; my friend, let us go to the shady garden.
All are sleeping; only the stars look upon us,
Even they cannot see us through the branches,
And cannot hear us; only the nightingale can …
But even he does not: His song is too loud.
Perhaps all that can hear us are the heart and the hand.
The heart hears of such earthly pleasures;
Such happiness that we have brought to this world!
And the hand, having heard, tells the heart
That another, in it, burns and trembles,
That it, itself, is set ablaze in reply,
That one shoulder to another instinctively leans …
Afanasy Fet (1820–92)
Menuet, Op. 26 No. 9
Sredi nasledij proshlykh let
S mel’knuvshim ikh ocharovan’jem
Ljublju starinnyj menuet
S jevo umil’nym zamiran’jem!
Menuet
Amid the inheritances of years past
With their fleeting charms
I love the ancient menuet
With its melancholy faltering!
Da, v te veselyje veka
Trudneje ne bylo nauki,
Chem nozhki vzmakh, stuk kabluchka
V lad pod razmerennyje zvuki!
Yes, in those joyful eras
There was no more difficult a discipline
Than the wave of the foot, the tap of the heel,
To the measured melodies!
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text
Mne mil vesjolyj riturnel’
S jevo blestjashchej pestrotoju,
Ljublju pevuchej skripki trel’,
Prizyv kriklivogo goboja!
The happy ritornello is dear to me
With its sparkling splendour;
I love the lilting violin’s trill;
The shrill call of the oboe!
No chasto ikh napev zhivoj
Vdrug nota skorbnaja pronzala,
I chasto v shumnom vikhre bala
Mne otzvuk slyshalsja inoj,
But often their lively tune
Was suddenly pierced by a grievous note,
And often in the swirling whispers of the ball
I heard a different lingering sound,
Kak budto pronosilos’ ekho
Zloveshchikh, besposhchadnykh slov,
I kholodelo vdrug sred’ smekha
Chelo v venke zhivykh cvetov!
As though an echo of evil, merciless words
Were resounding,
And suddenly cold ran through the laughter,
A brow in a wreath of living flowers!
I vot, pokuda prisedala
Tolpa prababushek mojikh,
Pod strastnyj shopot madrigala,
Uvy, sud’ba reshalas’ ikh!
And so, amid the curtsies
Of a crowd of my great-grandmothers,
Beneath the passionate whispers of madrigals,
Alas, their fate was decided!
Smotrite, plavno, gordelivo
Skol’zit markiza pred tolpoj
S ministrom pod ruku … O divo!
No robkij vzor blestit slezoj …
Look – smoothly, proudly
The marquise slides through the crowd
With the minister on her arm … Oh wonder!
But her timid gaze shines with a tear …
Vokrug vostorg i obozhan’je,
Carice bala shljut privet,
A na chele Temiry sled
Bor’by i taijnogo stradan’ja.
All around, happiness and adoration
Are sent to the queen of the ball,
But on Temira’s brow there are marks
Of struggle and secret suffering.
I kazhdyj den’ vorozheju
K sebe zovjot Temira v strakhe:
‘Otkroj, otkroj sud’bu moju!’
‘Sen’ora, vash konec na plakhe!’
And every day Temira calls
The fortune-teller to her side in fear:
‘Reveal, reveal to me my fortune!’
‘My lady, your end is at the guillotine.’
Ne veter, veja s vysoty, Op. 17 No. 5
Ne veter, veja s vysoty
Listov kosnulsja noch’ju lunnoj.
Mojej dushi kosnulas’ ty.
Ona trevozhna, kak listy,
Ona, kak gusli, mnogostrunna.
Not the wind, blowing from the heights
Not the wind, blowing from the heights,
That touched the leaves in this moonlit night.
My soul alone was touched by you.
It is trembling, like leaves,
It is full of sounds, like the lyre.
Please turn page quietly
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text
Zhitejskij vikhr’ jejo terzal
I sokrushitel’nym nabegom,
Svistja i voja, struny rval
I zanosil kholodnym snegom.
The storm of life tormented it,
And with relentless drive and power
This howling storm just snapped the strings
And covered them with icy snow.
Tvoja zhe rech’ laskajet slukh,
Tvojo legko prikosnoven’je,
Kak ot cvetov letjashchij pukh,
Kak majskoj nochi dunoven’je.
But, oh, your words – they sound tender,
The touch of you is lightly felt.
It is like fluff which flies from flowers,
It is like a breath of night in May.
Alexey K. Tolstoy (1817–75)
Zimnii put, Op. 32 No. 4
Noch’ kholodnaja mutno gljadit
Pod rogozhu kibitki mojej;
Pod poloz’jami pole skripit,
Pod dugoj kolokol’chik gremit,
A jamshchik pogonjajet konej …
The winter road
The cold night gazes hazily
Under the burlap of my sleigh;
Under the runners the ground creaks,
Under the arc of the harness the bell rings,
And the coachman whips the horses …
Za gorami, lesami, v dymu oblakov
Svetit pasmurnyj prizrak luny;
Voj protjazhnyj golodnykh volkov
Razdajotsja v tumane dremuchikh lesov …
Mne mereshchatsja strannyje sny.
Behind the mountains and forests, in the mist of the clouds,
Shines the gloomy ghost of the moon;
The lingering howl of the hungry wolves
Carries through the fog of the dense woods …
Strange visions appear to me.
Mne vsjo chuditsja: budto skamejka stojit,
Na skamejke starushka sidit,
Do polunochi prjazhu prjadjot,
Mne ljubimyje skazki moji govorit,
Kolybel’nyje pesni pojot …
I imagine a bench,
And an old woman is sitting upon it,
Spinning yarn until midnight,
Telling me my favourite stories,
And singing lullabies …
I ja vizhu vo sne, kak na volke verkhom
Jedu ja po tropinke lesnoj
Vojevat’s charodejem-carjom
V tu stranu, gde carevna sidit pod zamkom,
Iznyvaja za krepkoj stenoj.
And I see in my dream how atop the wolf
I ride on the forest path
To fight with the wizard king
To the land where the princess sits waiting,
Suffering behind the impenetrable wall.
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text
Tam stekljannyj dvorec okruzhajut sady,
Tam zhar-pticy pojut po nocham
I kljujut zolotyje plody,
Tam zhurchit kljuch zhivoj i kljuch mjortvoj vody –
I ne verish’ i verish’ ocham.
There, a crystal castle is surrounded by gardens,
There, the firebirds sing at night
And peck at the golden fruits,
There murmurs the spring of the life-water brook and the
spring of the death-water –
And one believes and doesn’t believe one’s eyes.
A kholodnaja noch’ tak zhe mutno gljadit
Pod rogozhu kibitki mojej;
Pod poloz’jami pole skripit,
Pod dugoj kolokol’chik gremit,
A jamshchik pogonjajet konej.
But the cold night stares just as hazily
Under the burlap of my sleigh;
Under the runners the ground creaks,
Under the arc of the harness the bell rings,
And the coachman whips the horses.
Yakov Polonsky (1819–98)
Stalaktity, Op. 26 No. 6
Mne dorog grot, gde dymnym svetom
Moj fakel sumrak bagrjanit,
Gde ekho grustnoje zvuchit
Na vzdokh nevol’nyj moj otvetom;
Mne dorog grot, gde stalaktity,
Kak gor’kikh sljoz zamjorzshij rjad,
Na svodakh kamennykh visjat,
Gde kapli padajut na plity.
Pust’ vechno v sumrake pechal’nom
Carit torzhestvennyj pokoj,
I stalaktity predo mnoj
Visjat uborom pogrebal’nym …
Uvy! Ljubvi mojej davno
zamjorzli gorestnyje sljozy,
No vsjo zhe serdcu suzhdeno
Rydat’ i v zimnije morozy.
Stalactites
To me is dear the cave, where the smoky light
Of my torch reddens the twilight,
Where the sad echo sounds
In reply to my involuntary sigh;
To me is dear the cave, where the stalactites,
Like a frozen row of bitter tears,
Hang on the hard walls,
Where droplets fall on the stones.
Let there forever in the sad dusk
Be magnificent peace,
And the stalactites before me
Hang as the veil of burial …
Alas! Long ago the tears of grief
For my love were frozen
But still my heart is doomed
To cry in the winter frosts.
after René François Sully Prudhomme (1839–1907)
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text
B’jotsja serdce bespokojnoje, Op. 17 No. 9
B’jotsja serdce bespokojnoje,
Otumanilis’ glaza.
Dunoven’je strasti znojnoje
Naletelo, kak groza.
Vspominaju ochi jasnyje
Dal’nej sputnicy mojej,
Povtorjaju stansy strastnyje,
Chto slozhil kogda-to jej.
Ja zovu jejo, zhelannuju,
Uletim s toboju vnov’
V tu stranu obetovannuju,
Gde venchala nas ljubov’.
Rozy tam cvetut dushisteje,
Tam lazurnej nebesa,
Solov’ji tam golosisteje,
Gustolistvennej lesa.
The restless heart is beating
The restless heart is beating,
The vision has been clouded.
The sudden passion of lust
Has flown in like a storm.
I remember the beautiful eyes
Of my faraway companion,
I repeat passionate stanzas
That I once wrote to her.
I call her, my desired,
Let us fly away again
To that distant dreamland,
Where love brought us together.
There the roses are more fragrant,
There the skies are more azure,
There the nightingales are more tuneful,
And the forests are thicker.
Nikolai Nekrasov (1821–78)
Franz Liszt
Oh! Quand je dors
Oh! quand je dors, viens auprès de ma couche,
Comme à Petrarque apparaissait Laura,
Et qu’en passant ton haleine me touche,
Soudain ma bouche
S’entr’ouvrira.
Oh, when I sleep
Oh, when I sleep, approach my bed,
As Laura appeared to Petrarch,
And as you pass, touch me with your breath,
At once my lips
Will part.
Sur mon front morne où peut-être s’achève
Un songe noir qui trop longtemps dura,
Que ton regard comme un astre se lève …
Soudain mon rêve
Rayonnera!
Over my glum face, where perhaps
A dark dream has rested for too long a time,
Let your gaze rise like a star …
At once my dream
Will be radiant!
Puis sur ma lèvre où voltige une flamme,
Eclair d’amour que Dieu même épura,
Pose un baiser, et d’ange deviens femme …
Soudain mon âme
S’éveillera.
Then on my lips, where there flits a brilliance,
A flash of love that God has kept pure,
Place a kiss, and transform from angel into woman …
At once my soul
Will awaken!
Victor Hugo (1802–85)
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text
Pace non trovo
Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra;
E temo, e spero, ed ardo, e son un ghiaccio:
E volo sopra ’l cielo, e giaccio in terra;
E nulla stringo, e tutto ’l mondo abbraccio.
I find no peace
I find no peace, but for war am not inclined,
I fear, yet hope; I burn, yet am turned to ice:
I soar in the heavens, but lie upon the ground;
I hold nothing, though I embrace the whole world.
Tal m’ha in prigion, che non m’apre, né serra,
Né per suo mi ritien, né scioglie il laccio,
E non m’uccide Amor, e non mi sferra;
Né mi vuol vivo, né mi trahe d’impaccio.
Love has me in a prison which he neither opens nor
shuts fast;
He neither claims me for his own nor loosens my halter;
He neither slays nor unshackles me;
He would not have me live, yet leaves me with my torment.
Veggio senz’occhi; e non ho lingua e grido;
E bramo di perir, e cheggio aita;
Ed ho in odio me stesso, ed amo altrui.
Eyeless I gaze, and tongueless I cry out;
I long to perish, yet plead for succour;
I hate myself, but love another.
Pascomi di dolor; piangendo rido;
Egualmente mi spiace morte e vita.
In questo stato son, Donna, per Voi.
I feed on grief, yet weeping, laugh;
Death and life alike repel me.
To this state I am come, my lady, because of you.
Francesco Petrarch (1304–74)
I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi
I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi,
E celesti bellezze al mondo sole;
Tal che di rimembrar mi giova, e dole:
Che quant’io miro, par sogni, ombre, e fumi.
I beheld on earth angelic grace
I beheld on earth angelic grace,
And heavenly beauty unmatched in this world;
Such as to gladden and pain my memory:
Which is so clouded with dreams, shadows and mists.
E vidi lagrimar que’ duo bei lumi,
Ch’han fatto mille volte invidia al sole;
Ed udii sospirando dir parole
Che farian gir i monti, e stare i fiumi.
And I beheld tears spring from those two bright eyes,
Which many a time have put the sun to shame;
And heard words uttered with such sighs
As to move the mountains and stay the rivers.
Amor, senno, valor, pietate, e doglia
Facean piangendo un più dolce concento
D’ogni altro, che nel mondo udir si soglia.
Love, wisdom, courage, pity, and grief
Made in that plaint a sweeter concert
Than any other to be heard on earth.
Ed era ’l cielo all’armonia sì ’ntento
Che non si vedea in ramo mover foglia.
Tanta dolcezza avea pien l’aere e ’l vento.
And heaven on that harmony was so intent
That not a leaf upon the bough was seen to stir.
Such sweetness had filled the air and winds.
Francesco Petrarch
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text
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Shest’ romansov, Op. 73
My sideli s toboj
My sideli s toboj u zasnuvshej reki.
S tikhoj pesnej proplyli domoj rybaki.
Solnca luch zolotoj za rekoj dogoral …
I tebe ja togda nichego ne skazal.
Six Romances
We sat together
We sat together by a sleeping river.
The fishermen passed by, singing a quiet song.
A golden sunbeam was dying over the river …
And that time I didn’t tell you anything.
Zagremelo v dali … Nadvigalas’ groza …
Po resnicam tvojim pokatilas’ sleza …
I s bezumnym rydan’jem k tebe ja pripal …
I tebe nichego, nichego ne skazal.
We heard the crash of thunder far away.
A storm was coming …
Tears flowed down your cheek …
I embraced you with passionate weeping …
And I said nothing.
I teper’, v eti dni, ja, kak prezhde, odin,
uzh ne zhdu nichego ot grjadushchikh godin …
V serdce zhiznennyj zvuk uzh davno otzvuchal …
akh, zachem ja tebe nichego ne skazal!
And these days I’m alone, as I have always been,
I do not expect anything from the years to come …
Such sounds faded from my heart long ago …
Ah, why did I say nothing!
Noch’
Merknet slabyj svet svechi …
Brodit mrak unylyj …
I toska szhimajet grud’
S neponjatnoj siloj …
Night
The candle is flickering …
The gloomy darkness fermenting …
And my heart is being squeezed
So mysteriously by sorrow …
Na pechal’nyje glaza
Tikho son niskhodit …
I s proshedshim v etom mig
Rech’ dusha zavodit.
Upon my sad eyes
Dreams quietly descend …
And in this moment my soul
Is starting to talk to the days gone by.
Istomilasja ona
Gorest’ju glubokoj.
Pojavis’ zhe, khot’ vo sne,
O, moj drug dalekij!
My soul
Is worn out by sorrow.
Oh, come to me in my dream at least,
My friend who is so far away!
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text
V etu lunnuju noch’
V etu lunnuju noch’, v etu divnuju noch’,
V etot mig blagodatnyj svidan’ja,
O, moj drug, ja ne v silakh ljubvi prevozmoch’,
Uderzhat’ ja ne v silakh priznan’ja!
On this moonlit night
On this moonlit night, in this divine night,
In this blessed moment of our rendezvous,
Oh, my friend, I cannot overcome the extent of my caring,
And am not able to contain my vows of love!
V serebre chut’ kolyshetsja ozera glad’ …
Naklonjas’, zasheptalisja ivy …
No bessil’ny slova! Kak tebe peredat’
Istomlennogo serdca poryvy?
The waves’ silver smoothness flutters …
Bent low, the eaves whisper together …
But I am speechless as to how to reveal
The desires of my weary heart.
Noch’ ne zhdjot, noch’ letit … Zakatilas’ luna …
Dorogaja, prosti! Snova zhizni volna
Nam nesjot den’ toski i pechali!
The night does not wait; the night flies away … The moon is
leaving the sky …
In the mysterious distance, beams of light have begun
to appear …
Dear one, forgive me! Again the wave of life
Brings to us a day of longing and sadness!
Zakatilos’ solnce
Zakatilos’ solnce, zaigrali kraski
Legkoj pozolotoj v sineve nebes …
V obajan’je nochi sladostrastnoj laski
Tikho chto-to shepchet zadremavshij les …
The sun has set
The sun has set; the colours have begun
Sending golden beams of light into the blue of the skies …
In the charm of the night, filled with passion,
Quietly whisper the slumbering woods …
I v dushe trevozhnoj umolkajut muki
I dyshat’ vsej grud’ju v etu noch’ legko …
Nochi divnoj teni, nochi divnoj zvuki
Nas s toboj unosjat, drug moj, daleko.
And the troubled soul is freed of worries
And to breathe fully in this night is easy …
The shadows and sounds of this divine night
Carry us, my friend, far away.
Vsja ob’jata negoj etoj nochi strastnoj,
Ty ko mne sklonilas’ na plecho glavoj …
Ja bezumno schastliv, o, moj drug prekrasnyj,
Beskonechno schastliv v etu noch’s toboj!
Wrapped in the passion of this night of desire,
You have tenderly laid your head upon my shoulder …
I am extremely happy, oh my perfect friend,
Forever happy in this night with you!
Zaalelo v tajinstvennoj dali …
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text
Sred’ mrachnykh dney
Sred’ mrachnykh dnej, pod gnetom bed,
Iz mgly tumannoj proshlykh let,
Kak otblesk radostnykh luchej,
Mne svetit vzor tvojikh ochej.
Amid sombre days
Amid sombre days, under troubles’ weight,
From the haze of years gone by,
Like the gleam of happy beams of light,
So shines the sparkle of your eyes to me.
Pod obajan’jem svetlykh snov
Mne mnitsja, ja s toboju vnov’.
Pri svete dnja, v nochnoj tishi
Deljus’ vostorgami dushi.
Under the charm of translucent dreams
I imagine that I am again with you.
In the light of day, in the still of night
I share in the delights of my soul.
Ja vnov’ s toboj! – moja pechal’
Umchalas’ v pasmurnuju dal’ …
I strastno vnov’ khochu ja zhit’ –
Toboj dyshat’, tebja ljubit’!
I am again with you! My sorrow
Trod away into the hazy distance …
And I have renewed passion for life –
To breathe you in, and to love you!
Snova, kak prezhde, odin
Snova, kak prezhde, odin,
Snova ob’jat ja toskoj.
Smotritsja topol’ v okno,
Ves’ ozarjonnyj lunoj.
Smotritsja topol’ v okno
Shepchut o chem to listy
V zvezdakh gorjat nebesa
Gde teper’, milaja, ty?
Vsjo, chto tvoritsja so mnoj,
Ja peredat’ ne berus’.
Drug! Pomolis’ za menja,
Ja za tebja uzh moljus’!
Again, as before, alone
Again, as before, alone,
And again unbearable anguish oppresses my heart.
The poplar is looking at my window,
Illumined by the moon.
The poplar is looking at my window,
The leaves are whispering about something,
The sky is full of shining stars,
Darling, where are you now?
I am not able to explain,
All that is happening to me.
My friend! Pray to God for me,
Since I am already praying for you!
Daniil Rathaus (1868–1937)
Texts and translations reprinted with kind permission
from Carnegie Hall
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about the performers
Pavel Antonov
About tonight’s performers
Dmitri Hvorostovsky baritone
Dmitri Hvorostovsky was born and
studied in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia,
coming to international prominence
when he won the 1989 Cardiff Singer
of the World Competition. Following
his Western operatic debut with Nice
Opera in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of
Spades, he made appearances at the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden,
Metropolitan Opera, New York,
Opéra de Paris, Bavarian State
Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Milan,
Chicago Lyric Opera, Vienna State
Opera and at the Salzburg Festival.
In recital he has appeared all over the
world, including at such prestigious
venues as London’s Wigmore Hall,
Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, Carnegie
Hall in New York, the Moscow
Conservatoire, the Liceu, Barcelona,
Tokyo’s Suntory Hall and the Vienna
Musikverein. He regularly works with
leading orchestras such as the New
York and Rotterdam Philharmonic
orchestras and with such conductors as
Claudio Abbado, Valery Gergiev,
Bernard Haitink, James Levine, Lorin
Maazel, Zubin Mehta and Yuri
Temirkanov.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky retains strong links
with his homeland, giving tours of the
cities of Russia and Eastern Europe
on an annual basis. He was the first
opera singer to give a solo concert in
Moscow’s Red Square, which was
televised and broadcast to more than
25 countries. He also has his own
concert series in Moscow, to which
he has invited such artists as Renée
Fleming, Sumi Jo and Sondra
Radvanovsky. Recently he has
undertaken a new collaboration with
the Russian popular composer Igor
Krutoi, with concerts in Moscow,
St Petersburg and Kiev.
His extensive discography includes
recital and aria discs and complete
operas on CD and DVD. Recent
releases include a DVD with Renée
Fleming, a disc of Verdi opera scenes
with Sondra Radvanovsky and two
solo CDs: Tchaikovsky Romances and
Pushkin Romances, both with tonight’s
pianist Ivari Ilja. He also starred in
Don Giovanni Unmasked, an awardwinning film based on Mozart’s opera,
in which he took the dual roles of the
nobleman and his manservant.
Future engagements include
appearances at the Metropolitan
Opera, Royal Opera House and
Vienna Staatsoper; various recitals
in Europe and a major concert tour
of Russia.
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about the performers
Ivari Ilja piano
Ivari Ilja was born in Tallinn, Estonia,
and studied the piano at the Tallinn
State Conservatoire with Laine Mets
and at the Moscow Conservatoire
with Vera Gornostayeva and Sergey
Dorensky.
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He is internationally recognised as an
accompanist and ensemble musician
and has been particularly acclaimed
for his collaborations with Dmitri
Hvorostovsky, Irina Arkhipova, Maria
Guleghina and Elena Zaremba.
With these artists he has appeared
at illustrious music venues such as
Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Avery
Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center in
Washington DC, Davies Symphony
Hall, San Francisco, La Scala, Milan,
London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and
Wigmore Hall, the Bolshoi Theatre
in Moscow, the great halls of the
St Petersburg Philharmonic and
Moscow Conservatoire, Staatsoper
Hamburg, Deutsche Oper Berlin,
Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, the Vienna
Musikverein and Salzburg Mozarteum.
Ivari Ilja has also given solo recitals
in France, the UK, Germany, Estonia,
Russia, Sweden and Finland and
performed as a soloist with
orchestras such as the Estonian
National, Moscow and St Petersburg
Symphony orchestras.
His repertoire is centred around the
Romantic repertoire, particularly
Chopin, Brahms and Schumann, but
also encompasses Mozart, Prokofiev
and Britten.
Since 2003, he has regularly toured
with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, visiting the
USA, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan
and elsewhere.