Pelageya Kurennaya in the Cathedral of Espoo on the 2nd of July, 2018

Also this summer Espoo’s Organ Night and Aria Festival has offered several interesting performances among which the audience has been able to choose the ones that suit the best his or her taste. I ended up listening to Pelageya Kurennaya’s concert in the Cathedral of Espoo. I have heard her earlier in smaller roles in the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, so a chance to hear her sing a whole concert was intriguing. And when she was accompanied on the piano by Marita Viitasalo, I had rather high expectation before the concert.

And it turned out to be quite an interesting concert of a young singer. Sure, you could still hear that we are talking about a young and developing singer and all the songs did not yet quite fit her, but there were enough suitable songs in the programme, that I look forward to her future career. First of all I have to say that for a Russian opera singer, her pronunciation of foreign languages was rather good. You could recognize the languages and follow the text relatively well. Even in the first additional song (Oskar Merikanto’s “Pai, pai, paitaressu”) her pronunciation of Finnish was not at all bad.

Kurennaya wasn’t yet splendid in the most dramatic songs. Her voice lacked the deep feeling and strong gestures could not replace that. But in the Russian songs and especially in Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “The Canary” (Канарейка) and the cradle song “Kolibelnaya pesnya (Колыбельная песня) the deep feeling was there and they were without doubt among the best songs of the evening.

All in all, I can say that even though the concert may not have been pitch perfect, it did offer good singing and even some star moments. It will be nice to remember this evening when – and I am intentionally using the word “when” here – Kurennaya has reached more fame in the operatic world.