Winning the 1989 "Cardiff Singer of the World" competition was only the beginning for Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who has gone on to win tremendous acclaim on the world's opera and concert stages as well as inclusion on People's "50 Most Beautiful People" list—thus rubbing shoulders with Naomi Campbell and Pierce Brosnan even before he let his trademark hair grow prematurely silver, suiting the timbre of his gray-steel-in-a-velvet-holster instrument. The beauty of the voice is unarguable, as is Hvorostovsky's fierce commitment to Russian music of all types, from classical to pop. For his upcoming Verizon concert, he takes on the three great songwriters among his countrymen, programming groups of "romansy" by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff—and not only well-known ones, like the latter's wonderful "In the silence of the night"—and essaying modest Mussorgsky's cycle "Songs and Dances of Death." The Mussorgsky cycle is one of this singer's specialties, giving four chillingly macabre portrayals of personified Death intruding on human life—including an astonishing (and ever-current) one making it very clear exactly who triumphs in times of war. For contrast, Hvorostovsky takes on four songs left by the eccentrically demanding Henri Duparc, who destroyed all of his own output that didn't seem to him masterpieces. Esteemed Estonian pianist Ivari Ilja accompanies—no mean task on the fantastic piano parts the virtuoso Rachmaninoff wrote for himself.