Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky returns to Carnegie Hall in a recital with pianist Ivari Ilja on Wednesday, February 17 at 8:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, performing works by Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mahler, and Richard Strauss. The concert marks more than 25 years since Mr. Hvorostovsky's Carnegie Hall debut 1990; he last performed at the Hall with Mr. Ilja in 2013.
About the Artist
Internationally acclaimed Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky was born and studied in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. In 1989, he won the prestigious Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. From the start, audiences were amazed by his cultivated voice, innate sense of musical line, and natural legato. After his Western operatic debut at the Nice Opera in Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame, his career exploded to take in regular engagements at the world's major opera houses and appearances at renowned international festivals, including the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; New York's Metropolitan Opera; Paris Opera; Bavarian State Opera; the Salzburg Festival; Teatro alla Scala Milan; Vienna State Opera; and the Chicago Lyric Opera.
A celebrated recitalist in demand in every corner of the globe-from the Far East to the Middle East, from Australia to South America-Mr. Hvorostovsky has appeared at such venues as Wigmore Hall, London; Queen's Hall, Edinburgh;
Carnegie Hall, New York; the Teatro alla Scala, Milan; the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, Moscow; the Liceu, Barcelona; Suntory Hall, Tokyo; and the Musikverein, Vienna. The singer regularly performs in concert with top orchestras like the
New York Philharmonic and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, with conductors including
James Levine, Bernard Haitink, Claudio Abbado,
Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Yuri Termikanov, and Valery Gergiev.
Mr. Hvorostovsky retains a strong musical and personal contact with Russia. He became the first opera singer to give a solo concert with orchestra and chorus on Red Square in Moscow; this concert was televised in over 25 countries. He has gone on to sing a number of prestigious concerts in Moscow as a part of his own series, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Friends, in which he has invited such celebrated artists as Renée Fleming, Sumi Jo, and
Sondra Radvanovsky to perform. In 2005, Mr. Hvorostovsky gave an historic tour throughout the cities of Russia, singing to crowds of hundreds of thousands of people to commemorate the soldiers of the Second World War. He now tours the cities of Russia and Eastern Europe on an annual basis.
Mr. Hvorostovsky's extensive discography spans recitals and complete operas. He has also starred in Don Giovanni Unmasked, an award-winning film by Rhombus Media based on the Mozart opera, tackling the dual roles of Don Giovanni and Leporello.
Born in Tallinn, Estonia, Ivari Ilja studied piano at the Tallinn State Conservatoire with Professor Laine Mets and at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire with Professor Vera Gornostayeva and Professor Sergey Dorensky. Mr. Ilja is an internationally recognized collaborative pianist and ensemble musician, and his collaborations with renowned singers Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Irina Arkhipova, Maria Guleghina, and Elena Zaremba have been particularly successful and acclaimed. Together they have performed on many of the great concert stages of the world, including
Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Avery Fisher Hall in New York; The Kennedy Center in Washington; Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco; La Scala in Milan; Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall in London; the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow; the great halls of St. Peterburg Philharmonic and Moscow Conservatory; Staatsoper Hamburg; Deutsche Oper Berlin; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; the Musikverein of Vienna; and the Mozarteum of Salzburg.
Mr. Ilja has also performed solo recitals in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Sweden, and Finland and has performed as a soloist with several symphony orchestras such as the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra. His repertoire largely consists of Romantic-era music, primarily works by Chopin, Brahms, and Schumann, but also music by Mozart, Prokofiev, Britten, and others. Since 2003, Mr. Ilja has toured with baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the United States, Europe, Hong Kong, and Japan, among other locations.
