If in recent times there has been a more beautiful or subtler account of the Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin than that given here by Inessa Galante, I haven’t heard it. Galante makes us believe that these are the inner thoughts of an obsessed young girl as she moulds her phrases with a sense of spontaneous feeling: you can almost see Tatyana writing in her boudoir. The voice itself, which we know so far only from indifferent recordings from the soprano’s home country, Latvia, here blossoms into the warm, vibrant, evenly produced instrument one suspected it to be and its owner uses it with unfailing musicality, aided by Jarvi’s sympathetic support.
This is the glorious centrepiece of “The Tchaikovsky Experience” – a worthy successor to “The Puccini Experience” (1/96) from the same source – with excerpts from all his operas. Galante is no less, possibly even more, moving as vulnerable Iolanta learning of her blindness from her admirer Vaudemont in the composer’s last opera. This, one of the most touching duets in Tchaikovsky, perhaps in all opera, is compellingly sung here by Galante and the tenor Alexander Fedin. Earlier Galante sings with sad poignancy as Joan of Arc in her famous farewell to her native countryside and as the heroine of Oprichnik. Again, her singing is unfailingly natural and unaffected, so lovely as to stifle criticism.
Marina Shaguch deserves almost as much praise. Her voice isn’t as easily produced as Galante’s but is more dramatic in character. She has some of the rarer material to interpret. For many the haunting solo from Undina, one of a few surviving fragments as John Allison tells us in his well-informed notes, will be a welcome discovery. Shaguch sings it with the fey charm it calls for. She is equally convincing as poor, demented Maria at the end of Mazeppa, singing a lullaby to her sweetheart dying in her arms. She is charming as Oskana (Vakula the Smith) and in the title-role of The Enchantress, a late piece we should see on stage.
Sergei Leiferkus sings with his customary conviction in Robert’s soliloquy from Iolanta. Though his account of Yeletsky’s solo from The Queen of Spades isn’t as ingratiating as some, it is delivered with compensating intelligence. I am less happy with Fedin’s contributions. As the hero of The Voyevoda – not the composer’s most inspired score – and Hermann, his typically Russian tenor is inclined to lose focus under pressure. Jarvi conducts all the music with command of idiom, drawing refined playing from the ROH Orchestra.
Unfortunately texts and translations aren’t included – you have to write off for them. None the less this is an important disc, well recorded, and generously filled.'