What makes
Anna Netrebko more than just the next Russian soprano? Is it her as direct but not as quite so refined technique, her less restrained but much more effective interpretations, and her intensely expressive but always under control tone? Or is it her distinctively non-Russian vibrato -- leaner, cleaner, and with a much tighter focus but just as much power? One has to listen to
Netrebko's Russian Album and judge for one's self. Listen to her tenderly touching Arioso from
Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, her brilliantly colorful arias from
Rimsky-Korsakov's Snow Maiden, her passionately despairing songs from
Rachmaninov's Russian years -- especially her inconsolable "Oh, Do Not Sing Me Those Sad Songs" -- and finally her utterly enchanting and deeply affecting "Letter Scene" from Eugene Onegin in which
Tchaikovsky's Tatyana grows from a girl into a woman right before our ears. While in the past
Netrebko has delivered terrific recordings -- her Violetta in La Traviata was absolutely riveting -- this disc seems to cut closer to the heart of the singer and her sympathetic understanding of the style, the music, and the idiom makes the Russian Album perhaps the her best and most characteristic calling card. Deutsche Grammophon's sound puts
Netrebko center stage. Lamentably, it leaves
Valery Gergiev and the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater in the pit.