In Russia a 12th Century legend tells of a warrior mighty and virtuous who struck his enemy such a blow that blood rushed to heaven and bones spilled all over the earth. In Manhattan last week a pretty little Russian woman became that warrior, sounded his battle cry heroically. Next minute you could have believed her to be a whole band of Cossacks restlessly awaiting the approaching Tartars. Then she prayed, as a Siberian tribe long-vanished prayed to Kalaidos, its God. These were the stout, earthy beginnings of Nina Tarasova's first U. S. recital in five years.
Five years ago Nina Tarasova sang nothing but Russian peasant songs, songs she heard as a child on her grandmother's estate in the Crimea. Since then she has widened her scope, ferreted out more of the Old Russian songs fast dying under the new regime, explored the folk-music of France, Germany, England. All her songs tell stories. There was one last week in which a French husband glowered and raged at his simpering, deceitful wife. There was an arrangement of the Erlkonig which Goethe and the Kapellmeister Reichardt made for Goethe's cook. Tarasova sang it swaying eerily, perfectly depicting the bogey which haunted the child's delirium. The mechanics of such singing is secondary to the fact that words & music are ideally blended. Sometimes Tarasova's natural voice has a smooth cello quality, but she is versatile. She whispers when the mood requires it or she is a baritone fairly shouting. Because she is wife of Sportsman Stuart Fitzhugh Voss of Long Island, there were many social ites in last week's audience. Many Russians were there too who remembered songs she used to sing when she was a concert celebrity in St. Petersburg. They called her back time and again, shouting their requests.