Finalists in the vocal nomination of the Tchaikovsky Competition

Ten men (four basses, four tenors, two baritones) and only four women (three sopranos and one mezzo-soprano) qualified for the final in the Solo Singing nomination at the Tchaikovsky Competition. After a controversial decision by the jury on the nominations for the semi-finals, his choice of finalists turned out to be perfect, believes Vladimir Dudin.

Such an extremely objective decision of the jury in the vocal nomination at the Tchaikovsky Competition was not observed over the course of, perhaps, the last three competitions, where there were always some hard-to-explain preferences and distortions that made one doubt the purity of the intentions of high judging. It is still impossible to forget the competition of 2011, when, either due to the imperfection of the new voting system, or due to another, already human factor, such obvious contenders for victory as virtuoso sopranos Olga Pudova and Nadezhda Kucher did not make it to the final. If for some incomprehensible reasons three singers entered the current semi-final, which should not have been there due to their inconsistency with the level of the competition, then those players from the existing ones who, for the most part, deserved it one hundred percent, made it to the final.

The semi-final program of the vocalists is a small section of a solo concert, which includes Tchaikovsky’s romance, chamber-vocal lyrics of the 19th – early 20th centuries or works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Sviridov, a folk song (accompanied or a capella) “preferably of the country that the performer represents ”, a major aria of your choice and an aria from an opera, cantata or oratorio written after 1950. The requirements for the program of this tour are clearly morally outdated and require adjustment both in the list of lyric composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, since many other interesting composer names have been discovered in half a century, and especially in the item “works after 1950”, which excludes a lot of beautiful music of the first half of the twentieth century.

The performance in the second round is a strategically important, turning point, which, on the one hand, demonstrates the endurance of the singer, on the other hand, despite the inevitable stressful situation, gives the contestants a renewed determination to act, making it clear that they have been noticed, singled out from a large stream, recognizing their professional quality.

The recognition factor played a decisive role in this case, and those who did not seem so bright in the first round suddenly spread their wings.

At the same time, the 27-year-old Chinese bass Hou Liwei, on the contrary, after the first round was somewhat lost and looked paler in the semi-finals against the background of two Russian competitors – 26-year-old Konstantin Fedotov and 28-year-old Gleb Peryazev – and 31-year-old Korean Chong In Ho. The Russians launched heavy artillery in the form of armor-piercing hits: Fedotov burst into triumphant Chaliapin’s laughter in Mussorgsky’s “Flea” and delivered a convincing F-sharp large octave in Gremin’s aria from “Eugene Onegin”, and Peryazev sang a song familiar to the Russian part of the jury from violent feasts – “Oh, it’s not evening”, diplomatically balancing this frenzy with the stylistically verified Schubert’s “Double” from the “Swan Song” cycle.

Yury Marusin’s student, tenor Roman Shirokikh, also spoke confidently in the Olympics, in whose voice one could hear an organic fusion of Russian and European traditions – relatively speaking, Lemeshev with Juan Diego Flores. Once again Korean tenor Song Chi-hoon flaunted his virtuosity, this time in Lindoro’s aria “Languir per una bella” from Rossini’s “Italian in Algiers” – it was a checkmate, but in fact he checked Mao’s aria from “Nixon in China” by Adams, performing her in one breath. It was impossible not to consider exemplary the performance of the 24-year-old baritone Maxim Lisin, originally from the Khabarovsk Territory, but a Muscovite by education, who conquered both with the purity of articulation, and stylistic elegance, and personal resource, and male, Hvorostov’s charisma in equal measure and in Herod’s aria from ” Herodias” by Massenet, and in the Russian “Lime of the Ages”.

The only mezzo-soprano, Zinaida Tsarenko, did not choose her program very evenly, for some reason taking the traditional soprano romance “If only I knew” by Tchaikovsky and depriving Delilah’s aria “Mon coeur…” from “Samson and Delilah” of the expected sensuality. But in Ekaterina’s aria “No more Martha” from Petrov’s “Peter I” and the song “Mother, which is dusty in the field” showed a powerful intonational and expressive potential. Soprano Olga Maslova from Voronezh, who is head and shoulders above everyone in terms of her combination of performing qualities, also did not pick up works for the semi-final very well, but after the very risky “Vocalise” by Rachmaninoff and “Does the Day Reign” by Tchaikovsky, she more than compensated for the technical flaws in the extended aria of Abigail ” Ben io t’invenni” from Nabucco by Verdi. Now all the finalists have three whole days to prepare for the third round, which will be held with the symphony orchestra on June 29 at the Mariinsky-2.