A newly-wed Mo Lijiang came from China to study at the Nizhny Novgorod Conservatoire. Although he had to leave his wife behind in China where she works as an English teacher, he nonetheless brings his love for her into his performance of what seems to be a typically Russian genre - that of a romance.

      The majority of Russian romances are the songs that were written throughout the 19th c. The texts contain many old-fashioned words and expressions, and performance requires a strong acting gift. While it is possible to explain the unknown words, to teach a foreigner to convey the emotion would most likely end in disaster.

      The uniqueness of Mo Lijiang consists in the fact of him mastering the artistic part of singing a Russian romance. He painstakingly records all unknown Russian words and expressions in his exercise-book and then, as he confesses, he uses his experience of the relationship with his wife to work on the emotional, artistic side of the performance. This is certainly a unique case for contemporary Russian music, especially the old genre of a romance.

      Upon graduating from the Nizhny Novgorod Conservatoire, Mo Lijiang plans to expand his career and to wow the audiences in Europe and America. In the meantime, he is bracing himself for yet another Russian winter when he usually covers all of his face from the renowned frost.

      Source: AiF. Image courtesy: Cubuddhism PBWorks.

      Related: Russian Romance, Alexander Vertinsky, Sergei Lemeshev, Fyodor Shalyapin.