Dmitri Hvorostovsky - Songs And Dances Of Death (1994)

This recital by baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky could knock out the young and easily awed. The selection by itself is enough to send one into rapture: four Rimsky-Korsakov arias, Prince Igor's big aria from the second act of Borodin's opera of the same name, three arias from Rubinstein's The Demon and one from his Nero, the big aria from Rachmaninov's Aleko, and closing with Mussorgsky's Songs & Dances of Death in the Shostakovich orchestration. Though now, Hvorostovsky is just a another soulful pair of eyes sitting atop a nondescript voice. In the works that everybody and their brother has recorded, Igor's aria and Songs & Dances, Hvorostovsky has nothing to say that a half-dozen other singers haven't already said. And in the lesser known arias, Hvorostovsky's bland singing does nothing to make one want to go back to the whole works. If this is the first time hearing any of these arias and songs, you won't be disappointed. But if you know the works, you will simply be bored. -- James Leonard