Joroinen Music Festival organizes concerts in different, sometimes rather exciting places. This year one of the concerts ”Spring waters and autumn satires” was in the Manor House of Joroisniemi, which is a private home and not usually accessible for tourists. The manor suited the concert perfectly, even though the soloists recommended that the audience should sit at the back of the room, due to the loud volume. The soloists were bass baritone Sam Taskinen and soprano Elisaveta Rimkevitch. They were accompanied by pianist Mirva Helske.
The whole programme consisted of songs by Russian composers,
some of which were very well known and some – at least to me – unknown. The
styles of the songs also varied from romances and rather strange modern songs
to humoristic songs. My favourites were some well-known songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff
and on the other hand five satires by Dmitri Shostakovich, that I had not heard
before.
Rimkevitch sang her
Russian songs with great dedication and her performance can only be admired. I
think she had a bit of a cough, since she had to clear her throat a few times,
which must have strained her vocal cords a bit extra. One song was left out of
the original programme, and I thought that might have been because of her
slight cough.
Taskinen’s bass baritone
had clearly matured the past few years and it was very interesting the hear her
interpretation of Rachmaninoff’s song ”Не пой, красавица, при мне” (Sing Not, O Lovely
One). Usually it is sung by sopranos, so her interpretation was really interesting
to hear.
One extra ingredient
to the concert was brought by the piano, which was the manor house piano, that
was purchased in the 19th century from St. Petersburg. The piano has its own
personality, but its tone is warm and lovely. I have heard it said that it is
very heavy to play, but Mirva Helske did excellent work behind the keyboard.
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