Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s new disc explores two potent strands of Russia’s musical fabric, folksong and Orthodox Church anthems, separated in this programme by the well-known song ‘A snowstorm sweeps the street’ by Alexander Varlamov and ending with Georgy Sviridov’s Pushkin setting ‘The Bells of Dawn’, from which the recording takes its title. The singing here, backed by the rich sonorities of The Grand Choir ‘Masters of Choral Singing’, is more sophisticated than you might expect to hear in your average Russian church on a Sunday morning but Hvorostovsky does not over-egg it. In the characteristically lush harmonies of Pavel Chesnokov’s anthems, Hvorostovsky strikes a note of artless sincerity, matching the choir in mellifluousness, control of melodic line and in unaffected expressiveness.

Here and in works by Dobri Khristov, Mikhail Burmagin and Alexander Arkhangelsky, the overwhelming impression is that the music is close to Hvorostovsky’s heart, its dramatic impact directed at a higher power than the mere operatic stage. The lovely Varlamov song, arranged for soloist and mixed choir by the conductor Lev Kontorovich, acts as a bridge to the disc’s folk component. Here Hvorostovsky is equally in his element, finding the spontaneity of phrasing and the subtle inflections of joy and sadness (mainly sadness) that these timeless narratives embrace: the three songs that Hvorostovsky sings without the chorus are especially telling of his interpretative intensity and sensibility. ‘The Bells of Dawn’ by Sviridov, whose Esenin cycle Russia Cast Adrift Hvorostovsky memorably recorded in the 1990s, makes for a poignantly nostalgic envoi.