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BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2009 -  Main Prize Final: Russian Soprano Ekaterina Shcherbachenko wins the Main Prize and an Italian Tenor wins the Audience Prize, St. David’s Hall, Cardiff  14.6.2009 (BK) (SL)

Ekaterina Shcherbachenko -  Main Prize Winner

After what was probably the best Cardiff Singer final concert for some years, the Russian soprano Ekaterina Shcherbachenko won BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition on Sunday. The elegant 32-year-old soprano delighted the packed St David’s Hall audience with a stunning programme that brought the week of competition to a thrilling close.

This final was distinguished by two important factors: singing of extremely high quality from five contestants all of whom are clearly destined for important careers in opera, coupled with an extraordinary sense of camaraderie between every one of the twenty five competitors. Loud applause from the other four finalists was clearly audible after the young Italian tenor Giordano Lucà was awarded the Audience Prize (worth £2000) as a preliminary to the announcement of the Main Prize. Importantly too, most people in the crowded St. David’s Hall seemed more than happy with the Jury's announcements.

The decision was announced by John Fisher, the Jury' s Chairman and  Artistic Director of Welsh National Opera. Ekaterina Shcherbachenko was then presented with her Welsh crystal trophy and £15,000 prize by the Competition’s Patron Dame Joan Sutherland.  Ms Shcherbachenko said afterwards, “This is the happiest day of my life” and no doubt that  was true because in addition to the trophy and the prize money, winning the competition brings with it opportunities for engagements with both the BBC and Welsh National Opera.

As usual, the concert hall audience included opera casting agents, opera house directors, music lovers from around the world and the other Competition contestants, all of whom hung on every note from their fellow singers, applauding the each of the finalists as enthusiastically as everyone else.

Ekaterina Shcherbachenko was the last singer of the evening. The concert  opened with a sparkling performance from the diminutive Japanese soprano Eri Nakamura which set an impressively high standard from the outset. She is an extraordinarily communicative singer, obviously supremely gifted technically but also graced with the equally important quality of conveying deeply felt emotion in everything that she does. After delivering more than impressive performances of arias from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Bellini’s I Capuletti e I Montecchi and Puccini’s Turandot , she finished off her set with some stunning singing in Cäcilie from Richard Strauss’s Songs Op 27 in which she delivered even more extraordinary sound  to a work from  a totally different genre to the rest of her programme. A truly remarkable performance.

Giordano Lucà - Audience Prize Winner

 

The youngest competitor Giordano Lucà aged 21 and from Italy was next, having  won his place in the final only in the Competition’s last concert round on Thursday. With a programme consisting wholly of Italian arias, he impressed as a very accomplished young singer, though still not quite settled into his most appropriate repertoire as yet, even within the field of  Italian opera. But as the award voted him by the people who phoned in to the Audience Prize competition lines had proved, he is already set to become a popular favourite.

Jan Martiník, aged 26, from the Czech Republic had won had the Song Prize competition on Friday which had run in parallel with Sunday’s operatic competition. He sang arias from Dvořák’s Rusalka, Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Verdi’s Don Carlos that were full of dramatic character and  some genuine wily humour in the case of his ‘La Calunnia.’ His is a true bass voice which he wisely nurtures carefully, totally aware that like all real basses he needs time to develop his full potential as a singer. Like Shengyang, the bass-baritone winner of the 2007 competition, Jan Martiník is still young and has an imposing physical stature. If his development continues to go as well as it has done so far, he should have a very important career ahead of him; perhaps even in Wagner if that’s where his interests take him in the future.

The only counter-tenor in the Competition, 30-year-old Ukrainian Yuriy Mynenko has a voice that is probably unique. The tenor Tom Randle commented on television after Mr Mynenko won his concert round, that he was almost a male soprano and certainly his first choice for the final reflected this thought. ‘Ombra fedele anch’io’, an aria from the little known opera Idaspe by Riccardo Broschi, brother of the famous castrato Farinelli, needed fluid agility, apparently limitless breath and a huge varieties of vocal colour. As he showed in this aria and subsequently in ‘Crude furie degl’arrudi abissi’ from Handel’s Serse and again in ‘Oh patria…. Di tanti palpiti’ from Rossini’s Tancredi, Mr. Mynenko’s singing has all these qualities and more.

When Ekaterina Shcherbachenko finally appeared,  she charmed the audience with elegant and sophisticated performances in French, (‘Je voudrais bien savoir … Je ris’ from Gounod’s Faust) and in Italian (‘Signore ascolta! ‘ Turandot) before closing in English with Anne Trulove’s aria ‘ No word from Tom’ from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. None of these are her first languages of course and like Eri Nakamura before her, Ms Shcherbachenko combined technically exceptional and wonderfully communicative singing with emotional intensity and an attractive stage presence. We should mention that she might also have had the best dresses in the competition, for the benefit of committed Frock Watchers.

In the concert rounds the singers performed with either the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Lawrence Foster or the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera conducted by Paul Daniels. In the final, BBC NOW was conducted by the conductor who had worked with the singers in their concert round.

This year all 25 contestants were also eligible to benefit from a new bursary to help towards the development of their musical careers. A follower of BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, Annie Sankey, left the competition a bequest and a new bursary in her name to support singers who take part in the competition has been established. Menna Richards, Director BBC Cymru Wales said of it, “The bursaries will help support the studies of competitors, including helping with travel and the purchase of musical scores”.

Hats off then once again to BBC Wales/ Cymru, to the competition’s Jury members and their Chairman John Fisher, and to everyone involved in accompanying the singers. Between them they produced a demanding but thoroughly enjoyable Cardiff Singer of the World 2009. It used to be said invariably  that earlier competitions were judged as the ‘best so far’ by the organisers and though no-one said that this time, 2009 was a clearly a particularly good year. For that, the loudest cheers rightly belong the contestants themselves: each of them  brought extraordinary musicianship and noticeable goodwill towards their rivals  in roughly equal measures.

Bill Kenny and Sue Loder

Pictures © Brian Tarr

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