The Russian Chamber Art Society opened its nineteenth season of concerts of vocal chamber music Wednesday night. Founded by pianist Vera Danchenko-Stern, the group presents programs of music unlikely to be heard elsewhere. 

This concert at the French Embassy, combining unexpected songs by Prokofiev and Shostakovich, proved a typically thought-provoking affair.

Mezzo-soprano Anastasia Sidorova, who made a strong impression in Wolf Trap Opera’s Ariadne auf Naxos a few years ago, handled the Prokofiev songs. Two of the Three Romances, Op. 73, offered a glimpse of the more conformist side of Prokofiev, composed in 1936 after he had returned to live in the Soviet Union. The set, with poems by Alexander Pushkin, marked the centenary of the poet’s death the following year.

Sidorova plied her thick, sugary voice to these longing pieces, enunciating the poetry with clear diction. At the keyboard, Martin Labazevitch provided rarefied accompaniment, unabashedly sentimental in “In Your Brightness” and with a delicately placed tension in the nostalgic “Pine Trees,” about the poet’s return to a family estate where he spent two years in exile.

The charming mezzo sounded her best in the comic pieces that followed, especially in the breathless patter song “Chatterbox,” from Three Pieces for Children, also from 1936 and set to a text by Agniya Barto. Labazevitch kept pace with her expertly, as the narrator veered between denying that she talks too much and doing precisely that, all delivered with maximum humor by Sidorova.

Both singer and pianist relished the most inventive and challenging song of the first half, “The Ugly Duckling.” Prokofiev composed it while still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, based on Nina Meshchersky’s adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. Sidorova likewise excelled in this piece with her vivid story-telling style, mirrored skilfully by Labazevitch in the daring piano parts conceived by the young Prokofiev.

Violinist Risa Hokamura, who won first prize at the 2018 Young Concert Artists competition, provided an entr’acte. Her interpretation of an arrangement of three dances from Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet, accompanied by Vera Danchenko-Stern, offered moments of intense energy, in “Montagues and Capulets,” especially. Hokamura’s glowing soft sound, especially in the central “Dance of the Young Maidens,” stood out for its rich warmth.

The lighter first half served as counterweight to the much darker second half, devoted to Shostakovich’s late song cycle Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarotti. Completed in 1974, when the composer was suffering from cancer on top of a grave heart condition, these somber songs are suffused with an awareness of impending death. Shostakovich later told his son that he considered these starkly set texts by the Renaissance sculptor, eight sonnets and three other poems translated by Abram Efros, as his Sixteenth Symphony.

Bass Denis Sedov rumbled through the more vehement songs, heavy of vibrato and gruff of tone, his stentorian sound at times overwhelming the embassy’s auditorium. He took water breaks after three of the songs, observing what one might call the four “movements” of this monumental sung symphony. The third pianist of the evening, Genadi Zagor, played the often spare piano part with steely intensity, matching Sedov as he could with sharp attacks and plenty of volume at the keyboard.

Sedov struggled a bit with the more subtle demands of the music, too woolly-voiced for the more expressive love songs in the first section, but Zagor clothed them with more delicate pianism. Sedov’s strongest performances came in the second section, beginning with the irritated, even violent “Wrath” and continuing through the two songs referencing the medieval poet Dante, whose works Michelangelo read closely and alluded to in his paintings.

Michelangelo’s ranting against corruption and falsehoods clearly resonated with Shostakovich, who had endured hateful abuse under stifling Soviet artistic control. The bitter consolation of artistic endeavor did as well: “better it is to be a rock, when all around you are shame and crime: just not to feel it, no improvement in sight,” as the sculptor put it.

Inevitably for Shostakovich at the end of his life, thoughts of death consumed the end of the cycle. With one surprise: in the final song, “Immortality,” Shostakovich gives a sly wink, quoting a childishly simple tune he wrote when he was only nine years old, placed in the piano’s upper treble range like a child’s wind-up toy. The sense of returning to life’s beginnings runs throughout this enigmatic song, which ends with a curious piano postlude of repeated major triads, as if the young Shostakovich were joyfully obsessed with a newly discovered chord.

Sidorova returned to the stage to join Sedov for the encore, a rousing duet rendition of Boris Fomin’s romance song “Dorogoi dlinnoyu,” with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevsky. It is perhaps better known by its English adaptation, “Those were the days, my friend,” which the singers slipped in at the end of the performance. Drink, eat, and be merry indeed.

Katerina Burton and Magdalena Wór, joined by pianist Martin Labazevitch and cellist Igor Zubkovsky, will perform music by Lori Laitman and Margarita Zelenaia 7:30 p.m. December 6. thercas.com

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