At just over 40, Larin, now in his prime, is surely the best of the ‘new’ tenors. Since he has started making recital discs with Chandos he has come into focus as a recording artist much more clearly than when his name tended to get lost among many others in the cast-list of Russian operas. Not that anyone could have failed to recognize the excellence of his performance in (for instance) the complete Mazeppa under Neeme Jarvi (DG, 11/94) where his singing of Andrei’s solo in Act 3 had a thrilling incisiveness and vibrancy. That gains a rehearing now for comparison with this new version recorded four years later. There clearly have been developments in that time. The voice has seemingly filled out in the lower range, approximating more closely to the timbre of a heroic tenor. His art has certainly deepened, with more fully expressive delineation of phrases and, perhaps with Rozhdestvensky to help, a more complete responsiveness to mood and structure. For instance, the last word (“shast’ye”) before the start of the aria is allowed to linger, sighing for lost dreams and ruined happiness; also, towards the end of this marvellous solo, the call to death has now a more subtly-voiced compound of bitterness and acceptance.
Not everything is so satisfying. Perhaps he has outgrown Lensky, the impetuous, ill-fated young poet in Eugene Onegin. The love-song in Act 1 hasn’t the youthful ardour and impulse, and the great aria of the Duel scene is a fine piece of singing rather than the elegiac and then impassioned utterance of doomed youth (I brought out the ‘unauthentic’ Martinelli of 1921, and what a difference there, where the tone, the essential being, is impregnated with the emotions). Larin now is much closer (vocally) to Hermann in The Queen of Spades than to Lenski, and the fire burns bright in Hermann’s “What is our life?”.
The programme, as you see, is full of plums: there’s the Hindu Guest with his famous song, Vladimir of Prince Igor with that lovely nocturnal invocation, and Levko with his lullaby in May Night. Less expected presences are Monsieur Triquet from Eugene Onegin and Pimen, the old monk in Boris Godunov. At first one thinks that that must be a crazy misprint; but no, it is a setting by Rachmaninov, an imaginatively orchestrated piece of student-work. The orchestra here make a notable contribution to the recital’s success, and it is a further sign of grace that the chorus are brought in for the Cossacks’ “Go get the Mayor” spree in May Night.'