Wigmore Hall, London
Le 29/11/2001
Christine LETEUX
Salonen perd son Sacre
Relative déception
Explorations inattendues
[ Tous les concerts ]
(ex: Harnoncourt, Opéra)
Envoi de l'article
à un ami
Née à Odessa et éduquée à Saint-Petersbourg, la soprano russe a aussi étudié l'art dramatique au conservatoire, le genre de détail qui fait souvent la différence sur une scène. Son récital débute avec une oeuvre peu connue de Nikolai Medtner, la sonate-vocalise On pense immédiatement à la célèbre vocalise de Rachmaninov. Medtner a construit une pièce qui entrelace avec panache la voix et le piano.
Celui que l'on a appelé méchamment ? un Rachmaninov sans les mélodies ? démontre qu'il vaut beaucoup mieux que sa réputation. Prokina n'y est pas pour rien et on mesure d'entrée ses qualités vocales et son assurance au choix d'une pièce si périlleuse à mettre en place, surtout pour ouvrir un récital.
Le cycle de Prokofiev sur les poèmes d'Anna Akhmatova date de 1916. Il a été illustré par le passé par Galina Vichnievskaïa. Elena Prokina se montre une parfaite héritière de la grande soprano par son contrôle vocal et la vision dépouillée des textes de la grande poétesse russe.
Le sommet de ce récital fut, sans aucun doute, les Satires de Sasha Tchorny mises en musique par Dimitri Chostakovitch. D'abord symphoniste, Chostakovitch n'a que peu écrit pour la voix. Mais en 1960, il compose ce cycle de mélodies radicales par leur contenu, pour son amie Galina Vichnievskaïa.
La censure soviétique aveugle laissa passer cette oeuvre après l'addition du sous-titre : Images du passé, suggéré par la soprano. Quarante ans plus tard, le cycle n'a rien perdu de sa fraîcheur et de son audace. Chostakovitch a écrit spécifiquement ces mélodies pour le grand soprano dramatique qu'est Vichnievskaïa mais aussi ses qualités de comédienne.
Décidément à la hauteur de son aînée, Prokina maîtrise les exigences vocales de Chostakovitch du parlando au cri avec aisance. Elle vit chaque personnage en tragédienne. Elle est ce poète effrayé par la passion et ce logeur soudain pris par le démon de midi. Les Descendants furent trissés par le public moscovite lors de la création en 1961.
On comprend l'enthousiasme de ces Soviétiques en entendant une description si juste de leurs conditions de vie. L'allusion au garde-manger vide de toutes victuailles reste malheureusement d'actualité pour les Russes contemporains. Ce peuple n'en est que plus grand à nourrir des interprètes de la classe d'Elena Prokina.lick here to edit.
Le 29/11/2001
Christine LETEUX
Salonen perd son Sacre
Relative déception
Explorations inattendues
[ Tous les concerts ]
(ex: Harnoncourt, Opéra)
Envoi de l'article
à un ami
Née à Odessa et éduquée à Saint-Petersbourg, la soprano russe a aussi étudié l'art dramatique au conservatoire, le genre de détail qui fait souvent la différence sur une scène. Son récital débute avec une oeuvre peu connue de Nikolai Medtner, la sonate-vocalise On pense immédiatement à la célèbre vocalise de Rachmaninov. Medtner a construit une pièce qui entrelace avec panache la voix et le piano.
Celui que l'on a appelé méchamment ? un Rachmaninov sans les mélodies ? démontre qu'il vaut beaucoup mieux que sa réputation. Prokina n'y est pas pour rien et on mesure d'entrée ses qualités vocales et son assurance au choix d'une pièce si périlleuse à mettre en place, surtout pour ouvrir un récital.
Le cycle de Prokofiev sur les poèmes d'Anna Akhmatova date de 1916. Il a été illustré par le passé par Galina Vichnievskaïa. Elena Prokina se montre une parfaite héritière de la grande soprano par son contrôle vocal et la vision dépouillée des textes de la grande poétesse russe.
Le sommet de ce récital fut, sans aucun doute, les Satires de Sasha Tchorny mises en musique par Dimitri Chostakovitch. D'abord symphoniste, Chostakovitch n'a que peu écrit pour la voix. Mais en 1960, il compose ce cycle de mélodies radicales par leur contenu, pour son amie Galina Vichnievskaïa.
La censure soviétique aveugle laissa passer cette oeuvre après l'addition du sous-titre : Images du passé, suggéré par la soprano. Quarante ans plus tard, le cycle n'a rien perdu de sa fraîcheur et de son audace. Chostakovitch a écrit spécifiquement ces mélodies pour le grand soprano dramatique qu'est Vichnievskaïa mais aussi ses qualités de comédienne.
Décidément à la hauteur de son aînée, Prokina maîtrise les exigences vocales de Chostakovitch du parlando au cri avec aisance. Elle vit chaque personnage en tragédienne. Elle est ce poète effrayé par la passion et ce logeur soudain pris par le démon de midi. Les Descendants furent trissés par le public moscovite lors de la création en 1961.
On comprend l'enthousiasme de ces Soviétiques en entendant une description si juste de leurs conditions de vie. L'allusion au garde-manger vide de toutes victuailles reste malheureusement d'actualité pour les Russes contemporains. Ce peuple n'en est que plus grand à nourrir des interprètes de la classe d'Elena Prokina.lick here to edit.
Seen and Heard Recital Review
Dargomïzhsky, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Balakirev, Shostakovich, Salmanov, Minkov Elena Prokina (soprano), Elena Abeleva (piano), Wigmore Hall, 1pm, Monday March 21st, 2005 (CC)
Talk about star substitutions. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was originally billed for this lunchtime, cancelled and so we had the magnificent Elena Prokina, an international star who sang her native music (she is Odessa-born) with magnificent style. The sheer range of repertoire should have been enough, surely, to entice a full or near-full house. But no, there were inexplicably plenty of spaces. Small matter. Those of us lucky enough to be present were served a feast of Russian song. The thread that ran through the recital was that of a Spanish influence, a proclivity began in Russian music by Glinka. But it was not Glinka that kicked things off.
It was Alexander Dargomïzhsky (1813-1869), a composer best known (almost exclusively known, in fact) for his Pushkin opera,The Stone Guest (1866-9), an opera that has gained bad press for its unrelenting use of arioso. He did, interestingly, write aRusalka, too. Three Dargomïzhsky songs began the recital, one an aria from The Stone Guest (Laura’s aria, ‘Granada lies enveloped in the mist’). And what a revelation they were. The first, ‘The Sierra Nevada is shrouded in mist’ introduced Prokina’s rich, full voice and her smooth, legato line. The opera aria, a sweetly hesitant waltz, contrasted with the disturbed, dark sonorities of ‘The night zephyr’. Elena Abeleva’s accompaniments were musical and unassuming (she played with the lid up and never once even threatened to drown her soloist). Prokina obviously feels a great affection for this composer – two of the three encores came from his pen (the remaining one was the only ‘real’ Spanish music of the concert, some De Falla).
The jollity of Glinka gave relief in the programme. The frivolity of ‘I am here, Inezilla’ (1834) sat well with ‘Oh wonderful girl of mine’ from the 1940 Farewell to St Petersburg. But it was when we got to Tchaikovsky that it was easy to recognize the arrival of truly great music. Two Serenades were Prokina’s offerings (Op. 63 No. 6 of 1887 and Op. 65 No. 1 of the following year). Prokina reveled in lines such as, ‘may your repose … be caressed by the soft sound of kisses’ (from the first Serenade on offer).
Perhaps it was slightly unfair to the other composers to include Tchaikovsky. All offerings were fine specimens of the genre, yet set beside the Tchaikovsky, Balakirev’s Spanish Song (1855) sounded distinctly second-league. The Shostakovich Spanish Songs, Op. 100 of 1956 deserves more frequent airings. Prokina and Abeleva gave us Nos. 1, 2 and 6 of this set of arrangements of traditional Spanish folk-tunes. Immediately Shostakovich takes us into a Spain of the darkest hues, the piano low and resonant. Of course, anything jaunty comes through the Shostakovich-prism, while the contrasting ‘Dream’ provided a measure of peace. Here, as everywhere, Prokina’s diction was perfect.
The Sonnet (1960) by Vadim Salmanov was a real surprise (it comes from his 1960’s song-cycle Spain in the heart). English-only text in the booklet (an extra pound on top of the ticket price – no composer credited, wrong date given for the Shostakovich… no composer given for the Salmanov…) stopped full appreciation of this real cri-de-coeur. And finally, a sequence of songs from Mark Minkov’s Crying of the Guitar (1921), settings of Lorca, jazz-inflected at times, hypnotic at others. Amusing also – but sad – in the final ‘Carmen’, an image of an ageing Carmen whose hair is white and who dreams of ‘suitors of other days’. This last song was the only one in which Prokina really let rip, possibly scaling her voice down for the size of the hall in the rest of the recital.
What a great voice she has. It is always a pleasure to hear her. Weeks can surely have no better start than this Monday lunchtime.
Colin Clarke
Dargomïzhsky, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Balakirev, Shostakovich, Salmanov, Minkov Elena Prokina (soprano), Elena Abeleva (piano), Wigmore Hall, 1pm, Monday March 21st, 2005 (CC)
Talk about star substitutions. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was originally billed for this lunchtime, cancelled and so we had the magnificent Elena Prokina, an international star who sang her native music (she is Odessa-born) with magnificent style. The sheer range of repertoire should have been enough, surely, to entice a full or near-full house. But no, there were inexplicably plenty of spaces. Small matter. Those of us lucky enough to be present were served a feast of Russian song. The thread that ran through the recital was that of a Spanish influence, a proclivity began in Russian music by Glinka. But it was not Glinka that kicked things off.
It was Alexander Dargomïzhsky (1813-1869), a composer best known (almost exclusively known, in fact) for his Pushkin opera,The Stone Guest (1866-9), an opera that has gained bad press for its unrelenting use of arioso. He did, interestingly, write aRusalka, too. Three Dargomïzhsky songs began the recital, one an aria from The Stone Guest (Laura’s aria, ‘Granada lies enveloped in the mist’). And what a revelation they were. The first, ‘The Sierra Nevada is shrouded in mist’ introduced Prokina’s rich, full voice and her smooth, legato line. The opera aria, a sweetly hesitant waltz, contrasted with the disturbed, dark sonorities of ‘The night zephyr’. Elena Abeleva’s accompaniments were musical and unassuming (she played with the lid up and never once even threatened to drown her soloist). Prokina obviously feels a great affection for this composer – two of the three encores came from his pen (the remaining one was the only ‘real’ Spanish music of the concert, some De Falla).
The jollity of Glinka gave relief in the programme. The frivolity of ‘I am here, Inezilla’ (1834) sat well with ‘Oh wonderful girl of mine’ from the 1940 Farewell to St Petersburg. But it was when we got to Tchaikovsky that it was easy to recognize the arrival of truly great music. Two Serenades were Prokina’s offerings (Op. 63 No. 6 of 1887 and Op. 65 No. 1 of the following year). Prokina reveled in lines such as, ‘may your repose … be caressed by the soft sound of kisses’ (from the first Serenade on offer).
Perhaps it was slightly unfair to the other composers to include Tchaikovsky. All offerings were fine specimens of the genre, yet set beside the Tchaikovsky, Balakirev’s Spanish Song (1855) sounded distinctly second-league. The Shostakovich Spanish Songs, Op. 100 of 1956 deserves more frequent airings. Prokina and Abeleva gave us Nos. 1, 2 and 6 of this set of arrangements of traditional Spanish folk-tunes. Immediately Shostakovich takes us into a Spain of the darkest hues, the piano low and resonant. Of course, anything jaunty comes through the Shostakovich-prism, while the contrasting ‘Dream’ provided a measure of peace. Here, as everywhere, Prokina’s diction was perfect.
The Sonnet (1960) by Vadim Salmanov was a real surprise (it comes from his 1960’s song-cycle Spain in the heart). English-only text in the booklet (an extra pound on top of the ticket price – no composer credited, wrong date given for the Shostakovich… no composer given for the Salmanov…) stopped full appreciation of this real cri-de-coeur. And finally, a sequence of songs from Mark Minkov’s Crying of the Guitar (1921), settings of Lorca, jazz-inflected at times, hypnotic at others. Amusing also – but sad – in the final ‘Carmen’, an image of an ageing Carmen whose hair is white and who dreams of ‘suitors of other days’. This last song was the only one in which Prokina really let rip, possibly scaling her voice down for the size of the hall in the rest of the recital.
What a great voice she has. It is always a pleasure to hear her. Weeks can surely have no better start than this Monday lunchtime.
Colin Clarke
Elena Prokina
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2001/dec/05/artsfeatures6
Wigmore Hall, London
Erica Jeal
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 December 2001 00.00 GMT
Elena Prokina left St Petersburg and the Kirov Opera in the early 90s to seek her fortune in the West. That doesn't necessarily make her special - half her colleagues, it would seem, did the same thing. But what does make her stand out is the very individual quality of her soprano. While she retains that distinctive Russian sound, meaning she can lace the music of her compatriots with flasks full of dense, glutinous tone, it's the freshness and agility of her voice that you notice when she first begins to sing.
With this in mind, you can see why opening her all-Russian recital with a wordless song might have seemed a good idea. Yet, while Medtner's 1922 Sonata-Vocalise threw the spotlight on the pure, unfettered lyricism of her singing, it also cast a less flattering glare on the fact that, to be frank, Prokina doesn't always sing in tune. Seemingly not quite familiar enough with the piece, she at times seemed to be doing her best to drag her pianist, Alexej Goribol, into the next key down the scale.
However, Prokina is a feisty performer and wasn't going to be wrong-footed. Five settings by Prokofiev of Anna Akhmatova's poetry put her into her stride, showing off the whole, even-toned range of her voice. Performing from memory, and with words on which to hang her singing, she was far more secure. And Stravinsky's Two Songs were not only expressive but slightly mischievous too, even if the bells in the piano accompaniment to the first song, Spring, weren't really allowed to clang.
The Five Poems on Words by Fedor Tyutchev, set in 1976 by the living Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov, found in Prokina and Goribol two eloquent exponents. In the final song, Mal'aria, they generated a real sense of tension, Goribol playing at last at full tilt. Desyatnikov's melodic writing may be old-fashioned, wearing unashamedly the badge of Shostakovich's influence, but the small distortions he creates within its framework are tellingly effective.
Prokina trained as an actress, and it shows. Her cute yet glamorous stage presence seems suspiciously natural; more tellingly, her song interpretations were more effective the more they involved her taking on a character. She had the audience laughing out loud in Shostakovich's five Satires, which she delivered with virtuosic panache. Prokina is first and foremost an opera singer; but even on the recital platform, she's still a stage animal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2001/dec/05/artsfeatures6
Wigmore Hall, London
Erica Jeal
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 December 2001 00.00 GMT
Elena Prokina left St Petersburg and the Kirov Opera in the early 90s to seek her fortune in the West. That doesn't necessarily make her special - half her colleagues, it would seem, did the same thing. But what does make her stand out is the very individual quality of her soprano. While she retains that distinctive Russian sound, meaning she can lace the music of her compatriots with flasks full of dense, glutinous tone, it's the freshness and agility of her voice that you notice when she first begins to sing.
With this in mind, you can see why opening her all-Russian recital with a wordless song might have seemed a good idea. Yet, while Medtner's 1922 Sonata-Vocalise threw the spotlight on the pure, unfettered lyricism of her singing, it also cast a less flattering glare on the fact that, to be frank, Prokina doesn't always sing in tune. Seemingly not quite familiar enough with the piece, she at times seemed to be doing her best to drag her pianist, Alexej Goribol, into the next key down the scale.
However, Prokina is a feisty performer and wasn't going to be wrong-footed. Five settings by Prokofiev of Anna Akhmatova's poetry put her into her stride, showing off the whole, even-toned range of her voice. Performing from memory, and with words on which to hang her singing, she was far more secure. And Stravinsky's Two Songs were not only expressive but slightly mischievous too, even if the bells in the piano accompaniment to the first song, Spring, weren't really allowed to clang.
The Five Poems on Words by Fedor Tyutchev, set in 1976 by the living Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov, found in Prokina and Goribol two eloquent exponents. In the final song, Mal'aria, they generated a real sense of tension, Goribol playing at last at full tilt. Desyatnikov's melodic writing may be old-fashioned, wearing unashamedly the badge of Shostakovich's influence, but the small distortions he creates within its framework are tellingly effective.
Prokina trained as an actress, and it shows. Her cute yet glamorous stage presence seems suspiciously natural; more tellingly, her song interpretations were more effective the more they involved her taking on a character. She had the audience laughing out loud in Shostakovich's five Satires, which she delivered with virtuosic panache. Prokina is first and foremost an opera singer; but even on the recital platform, she's still a stage animal.