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FAVES
&
PREFERENCES
Why do I like to sing early music:
It combines traditions and sincerity, it is refined and naive, it is passionate and sane, sensual and innocent, it appeals to our hearts directly through the centuries.
More important thing: when I sing it, I feel myself some kind of sounding channel between heaven and audience, not instructing but appeasing:
Music for a while
Shall all your cares beguile...
One more reason: this music is quite difficult to perform: it requires much - understanding of early notation, ornaments, rhythm and tempo etc, singer must be a little bit polyglot, for to sing such music means to speak it properly. But early music is so condescending, that let us "recompose" it and feel ourselves authors to some extent.
My favourite early music:
English: Elizabethan lute song in general, among the composers of this period: Thomas Campian, Robert Jones, Alfonso Ferrabosco (II) and John Dowland. From others it's Henry Purcell who reigns.
Italian: Carissimi and other music of 17th century, Alessandro Scarlatti, mainly his Stabat Mater, Pergolesi. Antonio Vivaldi does not move me so much.
French: Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Clerambault and Monteclair, Nicolas Bernier wrote a very melodious and passionate music, both sacred and profane. "Lecons de Tenebres" by F.Couperin is among the most profound, great compositions of the early 18th c. in France.
German: J.S. Bach, G.Ph. Telemann, Schutz. Haendel and Johannes Rosenmuller are both German and Italian, as far as they wrote a lot of music in Italy (and more than that - they wrote in Italian style). As for Haendel, he could be considered also the greatest English composer of the 18th c.
Favourite baroque singers:
Counter-tenors: Alfred Deller (still!), Michael Chance, Gerard Lesne, Henri Ledroit, David Bowman.
Sopranos: Emma Kirkby, Maria Cristina Kiehr, Jill Feldman ...
To say the truth, I could continue - the names mentioned above are the first I've taken out of my mind. Why do counter-tenors come the first? The reason is essential: at the beginning I learned baroque style much more from counter-tenors than from female voices.
Favourite non-baroque singers:
Maria Callas, Maria Callas and once more Maria Callas... Feodor Shalapin, Dietrich Fischer-Diskau, Dame Joan Sutherland, Marian Anderson, Teresa Stratas, Placido Domingo, Victoria Ivanova...
Conductors:
Herbert von Karajan and Evgeni Mravinski. In the baroque music: Harnoncourt, Leonhardt, Pinnock...
Favourite composers after Bach:
Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Messiaen, Glinka, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev.
Other preferences:
Literature & Poetry:
English classical literature: Jane Austen ( "Pride and Prejudice" most of all), Charles Dickens, William Thackeray ("Vanity Fair"), Chesterton...
Edgar Poe
Montesquieu ("Lettres persanes"), Beaumarchais, Merimee, Dumas...
Pushkin, Aleksei K.Tolstoi, Alexander Grin...
Science Fiction:
Ray Bradbury: his "Fahrenheit 451" is too prophetic, it charms and frightens till stupor, it's about our modern world, our television, our pop culture, about our culture of users in general, where the Mediocrity reigns... Stanislaw Lem, Arcadi and Boris Strugatsky...
Movies:
English films based on classical literature ("Jane Eyre" with Timothy Dalton, "Pride and Prejudice" with Colin Firth, "Emma" with Gwyneth Paltrow), films by Eric Rohmer, sometimes Spielberg... Two shocks: "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Stanley Kubrick and "Dancer in the dark" with Bjork.
Film-operas:
"Carmen" with Herbert von Karajan and Zefirelli's "Traviata"
Actors & actresses:
Audrey Hepburn, Jodie Foster, Sir Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov, Anastasia Vertinskaia, Oleg Dal, Faina Ranevskaia, Juri Nikulin, Rostislav Platt...
"Background" music:
"Beatles", Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, Joe Dassin, Sade...
A number of songs, of which I don't remember the titles.
Music that drops out of the background:
Bjork
Pop-songs that make my eyes cry:
"Yesterday", "Show must go on"
Colours:
Lilac, beige, dark blue, the colour of the "faded grass"
Flowers:
Frezias, white-rosy peonys
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