Music Department Presents 'Russian Recital'
USU professor of voice Cindy Dewey is featured in a recital that features an evening of Russian music.
Utah State University’s Department of Music presents a “Russian Recital” with Nikolai Choubine, piano, and Cindy Dewey, soprano, March 17 at 7 p.m. in the Caine Performance Hall on the USU Logan campus.
“Nikolai is originally from Russia and is here this year because his wife is an ethnomusicologist teaching at the Caine College of the Arts,” said Dewey, recital performer and director of voice in USU’s music department. “He asked me if I would like to sing some Rachmaninoff songs and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work on my Russian with a native speaker. Rachmaninoff songs are fabulous and beautiful and make everyone want to become a singer when they hear them.”
Dewey said the first time she sang Rachmaninoff, she coincidentally had the opportunity to be coached by another Russian pianist who was a music faculty member where she was then teaching.
“Russian is a language full of consonant clusters, and in singing, the voice is carried on the vowels, so it is quite challenging initially for non-native Russian speakers to figure out how to include all the necessary consonant sounds while singing without slowing down the arrival of the vowel sound,” said Dewey.
Along with Rachmaninoff, the recital also features works by Mussorgsky and Scriabin.
“I have chosen a program that is representative of Russian music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” said Choubine. “Mussorgsky is a composer who is associated with the Russian nationalist movement of the 19th century and often used Russian topics in his music.”
Choubine said Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition also has a personal connection for the composer.
“Mussorgsky based the concept for the piece on an art exhibition of sketches by his friend who had recently passed away,” said Choubine. “Some of the sketches evoke Russian fairytale figures.”
The Scriabin pieces were selected because 2015 is the centenary of Alexander Scriabin’s death, Choubine said.
“I thought it would be interesting to pair Rachmaninoff and Scriabin because they are contemporaries and they were both pianists and composers, yet their music is very different from each other,” said Choubine. “While Rachmaninoff often sounds like a 19th century holdover in terms of maintaining a strongly tonal language, Scriabin’s mature works are often descried as mystic and he was influenced by certain trends such as theosophy.”
The Russian Recital is free and open to the public.
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Writer and contact: Whitney Schulte, 435-797-9203, whitney.schulte@usu.edu
Dewey is joined by pianist Nikolai Choubine in the March 17 recital that begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Caine Performance Hall on USU's Logan campus.
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