V1959. SERGEI LEMESHEV: Songs by Schubert, Tchaikowsky, Gurilev, Yakovlev, Bulakhov, Dubyuk, Nolinsky, Varlamov, Shashnia, Shishov, Novikov, etc., live recital of 23 April, 1949 – most delightful as Lemeshev gives spoken introductions to all the songs; plus songs recorded 1939-50. (Russia) Aquarius AQVR 357. - 4607123631195

CRITIC REVIEWS:

”This new Aquarius CD is a welcome addition to the Lemeshev archive of recorded arias and songs….What is especially interesting about this disk is its unusual contents [which] include a radio transcription recording of ‘Russia’ accompanied by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra conducted by Kirill Kondrashin….The 1949 Moscow Concert [portion only] (tracks 1 to 14) is an excellent recording – crystal clear, with a range that approaches high-fidelity.”

- Patrick V. Casali, THE RECORD COLLECTOR, 2012



“[Lemeshev] developed a mixed voice of incomparable beauty which made it possible for him to take the highest notes with such beautiful richness that even specialists could not explain how it was done. His high Cs…sounded virile and full.”

- Anatoly Orfenov



“In Russia, Sergei Yakovlevich Lemeshev (1902-1977) is—along with Feodor Chaliapin— perhaps the most beloved opera singer in recent history. He was born into a very poor peasant family, in a small village, during the years of the Bolshevik revolution and the Civil war, and Lemeshev was required to become a cadet in the Red Army Cavalry School. It was, however, actually the Revolution that helped him make his dream of an operatic career come true, since the Bolsheviks gave the poorest peasants and proletarians a preferential right to free education. Sergei was assigned to study at the Moscow Conservatory where, after surviving a rigorous competition, he was accepted. (This determined his political views, for as he said many times, ‘the Soviets gave me everything’.) In 1931, he became a leading tenor of the Bolshoi, where he sang for the next 34 years, winning great acclaim. His audience grew, along with his fame, and he soon gained a veritable army of fans, called ‘lemeshevists’. His vocal and artistic qualities, evident to every listener, are beauty of timbre, musicality, effortlessness of vocal production, expressiveness, and very clear diction, qualities perhaps most commonly found in bel canto singers. An interesting comment on Lemeshev’s singing was made by the Bolshoi tenor Anatoly Orfenov: ‘He developed a mixed voice of incomparable beauty, which made it possible for him to take the highest notes with such beautiful richness that even specialists could not explain how it was done technically….His high C’s … sounded virile and full…His manner of lowering his larynx a bit on high notes allowed him to perform the parts which we ordinary lyric tenors did not sing’.”

- Natalie, "younglemeshevist"



“Everything about [Sergei Lemeshev] was artistic....On the stage, until the end of his career, he was a youth, beloved and vulnerable. Even at seventy he still drove his admirers into ecstasies every time he sang Lensky at the Bolshoi.”

- Galina Vishnevskaya, GALINA, p.324