14.12.2016
A celebration of pure nostalgia
Classics of Soviet popular music will resound from the stage once again on 30 December in a celebratory evening of vocal performances at the Hermitage Theatre. Our opera company’s leading soloists promise to evoke an atmosphere of pure nostalgia.
The hits of the Soviet era have inspired a multitude of new arrangements and contemporary reworkings, but the authors of the concert programme wanted the songs to sound authentic, the way people remember them from the original recordings.
“For me, one of the most important things in achieving that sense of nostalgia is to stay close to the original”, explains Dmitry Golovnin. “This will be a debut of sorts; I’ve never been on stage with a microphone before. I’ve sung opera wearing a headset on a number of occasions, but performing a popular song is a different sort of challenge entirely. You don’t even need to fully sing it; it’s enough to almost hum the words. There’s a particular soulfulness to it which gets lost if you vocalize too much. Many of the really popular numbers of the past were performed by actors — it wasn’t even popular singing as much as it was popular acting. The vocals were secondary; emotion was the most important thing. The songs sung by Mark Bernes provide a perfect example. It’s that style of delivery that instantaneously conjures up a whole range of childhood associations. Familiar smells and other sensations from the past suddenly start coming back to you. People will come to our concert to feel that nostalgia, to hear good music that helps them reconnect with the past.”
At the concert, Dmitry Golovnin will be performing the hit songs Pochemu, otchevo (Why?) and Kak molody my byli (How Young We Were). Irina Mikhailova, Svetlana Monchak, Marina Tregubovich, Boris Pinkhasovich, and Alexander Shakhov will also be taking part in the concert.
“Much of the programme will be performed with the accompaniment of the symphony orchestra, and some numbers will be accompanied by acoustic guitar”, reveals Concert Master Natalia Dudik. “These include songs from the films Bolshaya Peremena (The Long Recess) and Ironiya Sudby (The Irony of Fate). As musicians with conservatory educations, we’ve been making a lot of new discoveries while rehearsing music that had previously seemed so familiar. We were very surprised when we opened the sheet music for Po Ulitsye Moyey (Along My Street), performed by Alla Pugacheva in The Irony of Fate. Rhythmically it’s very complex, more so than any of us had anticipated. You can’t fully appreciate how high the style is until you see it on paper. It’s quite a challenge when performing it not to stray into chanson or the sentimental Russian ‘salon romance’ style, but rather to convey the elevated nature of Bella Akhmadulina’s composition to the listener.”
The concert programme includes compositions by Isaak Dunayevsky, Alexander Tsfasman, Mikhail Tariverdiev, Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi, Evgeny Krylatov, Arno Babajanian, Andrey Petrov, Alexandra Pakhmutova, and Andrey Eshpay.
The hits of the Soviet era have inspired a multitude of new arrangements and contemporary reworkings, but the authors of the concert programme wanted the songs to sound authentic, the way people remember them from the original recordings.
“For me, one of the most important things in achieving that sense of nostalgia is to stay close to the original”, explains Dmitry Golovnin. “This will be a debut of sorts; I’ve never been on stage with a microphone before. I’ve sung opera wearing a headset on a number of occasions, but performing a popular song is a different sort of challenge entirely. You don’t even need to fully sing it; it’s enough to almost hum the words. There’s a particular soulfulness to it which gets lost if you vocalize too much. Many of the really popular numbers of the past were performed by actors — it wasn’t even popular singing as much as it was popular acting. The vocals were secondary; emotion was the most important thing. The songs sung by Mark Bernes provide a perfect example. It’s that style of delivery that instantaneously conjures up a whole range of childhood associations. Familiar smells and other sensations from the past suddenly start coming back to you. People will come to our concert to feel that nostalgia, to hear good music that helps them reconnect with the past.”
At the concert, Dmitry Golovnin will be performing the hit songs Pochemu, otchevo (Why?) and Kak molody my byli (How Young We Were). Irina Mikhailova, Svetlana Monchak, Marina Tregubovich, Boris Pinkhasovich, and Alexander Shakhov will also be taking part in the concert.
“Much of the programme will be performed with the accompaniment of the symphony orchestra, and some numbers will be accompanied by acoustic guitar”, reveals Concert Master Natalia Dudik. “These include songs from the films Bolshaya Peremena (The Long Recess) and Ironiya Sudby (The Irony of Fate). As musicians with conservatory educations, we’ve been making a lot of new discoveries while rehearsing music that had previously seemed so familiar. We were very surprised when we opened the sheet music for Po Ulitsye Moyey (Along My Street), performed by Alla Pugacheva in The Irony of Fate. Rhythmically it’s very complex, more so than any of us had anticipated. You can’t fully appreciate how high the style is until you see it on paper. It’s quite a challenge when performing it not to stray into chanson or the sentimental Russian ‘salon romance’ style, but rather to convey the elevated nature of Bella Akhmadulina’s composition to the listener.”
The concert programme includes compositions by Isaak Dunayevsky, Alexander Tsfasman, Mikhail Tariverdiev, Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi, Evgeny Krylatov, Arno Babajanian, Andrey Petrov, Alexandra Pakhmutova, and Andrey Eshpay.
