Life Line

Solomon Markovich Khromchenko was born on December 4, 1907, in the tiny town of Zlatopol, 100 km away from Kiev. During the Russian Civil war, he and his family moved first to Odessa, where the boy sang in the choir of a local synagogue, and then, in 1922, to Kiev.

In 1924-1925 Khromchenko, then a member of the Young Communist League, worked as a distribution agent for the Kiev press agency “Kotan”, then as a packer in the Kiev Committee against Unemployment. He was very impressed by the performances of the Moscow-based propaganda theatre “The Blue Frock”, which toured in Kiev, and organized, in 1925, a so-called “live journal” called “Barrow”, with which he performed all around Ukraine.

In 1927-1929 Solomon Khromchenko studied at the Kiev Musical college, then, until 1932, at the Kiev Conservatory, under Professor Mikhail Engel-Kron. At the same time, he was a chorister of the “Yevokans” choir, a Jewish Vocal Ensemble. In 1932, he was transferred to the newly-created post-graduate programme at the Moscow Conservatory, where, for the next three years, he studied under Professor Xenia Dorliak, the mother-in law of the famous pianist Sviatoslav Richter. In 1933 he was among the winners of the First AlI-Union Musical Competition in the vocal category, while the 16-year-old Emil Gilels won in the piano category. Next year, still a student, Khromchenko successfully passed auditions to the Bolshoi Theatre company.

During his twenty two years of service on this most prestigious stage of the Soviet Union he performed over twenty roles in the lyric tenor repertoire: Lensky (Eugene Onegin), the Indian Guest (Sadko), Bayan (Ruslan and Lyudmila), Vladimir (Prince Igor), Sinodal (Demon), Duke of Mantua (Rigoletto), Count Almaviva (Barber of Seville), Faust (Faust), Don Ottavio (Don Juan) etc.

As early as on August 6, 1941, he left Moscow with the artistic brigade to entertain the troops: during the war he gave over thousand concerts on the front, performing popular classical arias and folk songs. On May 24th, 1945, Solomon Khromchenko took part in the historical Victory Concert at the Kremlin.

Solomon Markovich was also recognized as a performer of an extensive concert repertoire: arias and romances by Russian classics (M. I. Glinka, P. I. Tchaikovsky, S. V. Rachmaninov, P. P. Bulakhov, A. E. Varlamov), old Russian romances, works by Western (R. Schumann, F. Liszt, F. Mendelssohn, I. Brahms) and Soviet composers, Neapolitan and Jewish folk songs.

After his retirement from the Bolshoi Theatre, Khromchenko worked at the All-Union Concert Association (1956-1962), and from 1961 to 1991 he taught at the Gnessin State Music and Pedagogical Institute, becoming its full professor in 1982. From 1992-2000 Solomon Khromchenko was a professor at the Rubin Academy of Music in Israel (now the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem).

For more than half a century Solomon Khromchenko actively recorded for the gramophone and magnetic tape. For the first time his voice was recorded by “Muztrest” with the Aria of Ole from the opera “Ole from Norland” by M. M. Ippolitov-Ivanov and the “Mattinata” by R. Leoncavallo in 1933. With Solomon Khromchenko as Bayan, the entire Glinka’s “Ruslan and Lyudmila” was recorded: during his years at the Bolshoi Theatre he participated in two of its productions – in 1938, with conductor S. A. Samosud and, in 1948, with conductor A. S. Melik-Pashayev. Between the 1930s and 1950s, he recorded a number of opera arias, romances and songs (including duets with baritones Piotr Kirichek, Konstantin Laptev and Piotr Selivanov and trios with soprano Natalia Schpiller and bass Maxime Mikhailov). Some of them were reissued in a two-record album, The Art of Solomon Khromchenko, released in 1977. In the 1980s he recorded a series of Neapolitan songs (1981), old Russian romances (1984) and Jewish songs (1987) on Melodiya – the latter disc was his gift to himself for his 80th birthday. Many of the singer’s recordings have been reissued on his solo CDs: “Russian and Jewish Songs” (1997), “Arias from Opera, Neapolitan and Spanish Songs” and “Young Solomon Khromchenko: Romances by Russian Composers” (2009). All the existing recordings are collected on this website – we hope you will enjoy listening to them.

In 2000 Solomon Markovich Khromchenko returned to Russia, where, on January 20th, 2002, he passed away peacefully in his sleep, in his apartment on Gorky Street, now Tverskaya. Until his very last day he considered his main title to be that of “soloist of the Bolshoi Theatre”.

In December 2004, the London-based The Record Collector published a short version of Solomon Khromchenko’s biography, written by his grand-daughter, Nadia Sikorsky. It was very warmly received by music lovers from all over the world.

In 2005, American leading professional opera magazine, The Opera Quarterly, published Solomon Khromchenko’s essays written during his teaching career and translated by Nadia Sikorsky, in two volumes. The cover of the second volume carried his photo in the role of Faust, in 1939.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Solomon Khromchenko’s death, the Swiss cultural review Ensuite published an article about his life and work.