Dmitri Hvorostovsky - In This Moonlit Night (2013) FLAC

The "Western" and "Russian" schools of Russian music in the late 19th century are less clearly defined in the realm of art song, where composers of all stripes drew on the shapes and melodic hues of Russian folk song. An attraction of this release by Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky is the inclusion of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death in a magnificent original version for voice and piano. Those songs, beginning with their grim lullaby of a death disguised as a babysitter, are indeed darker harmonically as well as thematically than the song sets by Tchaikovsky and Taneyev, the Western-oriented composers. But they still require a certain light touch and an ability to put across a pure tune, both of which Hvorostovsky has in abundance. Performances of these songs as scaled-down opera arias are fatal, but Hvorostovsky's voice, as he enters his sixth decade, has lost none of its liquid, delicate quality, and he performs these songs with sympathy and insight. Combine it all with the precise accompaniment work of Estonian pianist Ivari Ilja and with intimate but not overbearing acoustics from the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, and you have an album worth considering for first-timers in Russian song as well as for Hvorostovsky fans and those simply attracted by his status as one of People magazine's 50 most beautiful people in the world. -- James Manheim