A local professor is garnering international attention in the music community for a recent original composition of his, “We Say Farewell,” which has been published by the Italian publishing house Da Vinci Edition.
Dr. Michalis Andronikou, an Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Providence University College in Otterburne, dedicated the song to the memory of Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Andronikou had been admirer of Hvorostovsky’s voice for years.
“In my mind, he was a symbol of opera for the twenty-first century, like Maria Callas was for the twentieth century,” Andronikou reflects. He was saddened to hear that the singer had passed away at only 55 years of age after a two-year battle with brain cancer. “I will never forget the day that he passed away. I remember being in my office at Providence, reading his obituary. It was about 5:00 p.m., it was getting dark.”
As Andronikou was reading the obituary, he heard one of his colleagues talking to a student. That colleague was David Klassen, also a baritone singer, and his voice led Andronikou to a conclusion.
“It was then that I had the idea to do something to honour Hvorostovsky,” says the Greek-Canadian, who, in addition to this piece, has also had works published by the Canadian company Palliser Music Publishing and the Bulgarian Balkanota.
His next step was to approach another colleague, Dr. Luann Hiebert, a professor of literature, about writing a poem about Hvorostovsky. Then it was Andronikou’s job to compose the music to Hiebert’s words. Although he and Hiebert wrote the words and music separately, he says the project required them to be in sync.
“The accents of the words are also music accents, otherwise the flow of the song is not natural,” he explains. “Music and poetry become one, to express the ideas and feelings of the poet and the composer.”
To test the success of this marriage of words and notes, he says, they needed the right performers to try it out. Fortunately, Andronikou says, he was able to recruit two more colleagues from Providence: David Klassen and his inspiring baritone voice, and pianist Tracey Sawatzky, both of whom Andronikou describes as very “charismatic performers.”
Klassen and Sawatzky premiered the piece in this spring at a recital in Steinbach. The recording of the project was very well received, earning positive reviews and comments from around the world, and to date it has been viewed more than 4,000 times on YouTube.
“This piece is a lament in honour of a great singer,” says Andronikou. “We did not want to idolize the singer. Instead we honour our arts and ask people who listen to it to do the same.”
