Leeds Grand Theatre

Howard Assembly Room

17 April 2009

Sergei Leiferkus (baritone)
Julius Drake (piano)

Pyotr llyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893):
Blagoslovljaju vas, lesa; I bless you, forests (Tolstoy)
To bylo ranneju vesnoj; It was in the early spring (Tolstoy 1875)
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt; Only one who knows longing (Goethe)
Strashnaja minuta; The fearful minute (Tchaikovsky)
Ni slova, 0 drug moj; Not a word, my friend (Pleshcheyev)
Snova, kak prezhde; Again, as before (Rathaus)
Serenada Don-Zhuana; Don Juan’s serenade (Tolstoy)

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov (1873 – 1943)
Pis’mo KS Stanislavskomu ot SS Rakhmaninova; Letter to KS Stanislavsky from SS Rachmaninov
Vchera my vstretilis’; Yesterday we met (Polonsky)
Khristos voskres; Christ is risen (Merezhkovsky)
Sud’ba; Fate (Apukhtin)
Pora!; It is time (Nadson)
0, net, molju, ne ukhodi!; 0, no, I beg you, do not leave! (Merezhkovsky)

Interval

Modest Mussorgsky
1. Lullaby (1875)
A mother cradles her sickening infant, who grows more feverish, then dies.

2. Serenade (1875)
The figure of Death waits outside the window of a dying woman, in the manner of a wooing lover.

3. Trepak (1875)
A drunken peasant stumbles outside into the snow, and becomes caught in a blizzard. As he perishes he dreams of summer fields.

4. The Field-Marshal (1877)
The figure of Death is depicted as an officer commanding the troops in battle, who asserts his enduring remembrance of them all.