From an "opera-list" mailing list - a chorus member forwarded it to the entire chorus. "Janos.Gereben" wrote: Russian conductors - Gergiev and Temirkanov, especially - come to the US with their own singers. Tonight, Russian-American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas emulated his colleagues in a way by returning from his first concert tour to the country of his grandfather with four singers in tow. In a memorable all-Stravinsky concert in Davies Hall, soprano Elena Evseeva, mezzo Nadezhda Serjuk and bass Sergei Aleksashkin made their debut, tenor Viktor Lutsjuk returned for another performance in "Les Noces." The fifth soloist - the best of the lot - was Vance George's SF Symphony Chorus, singing with distinction all evening long, ending the concert with a "Symphony of Psalms" that was very close to perfection. Evseeva, from the Bolshoi, is a singer you will hear about in the future. She has a powerful voice and an uncanny ability to wring beauty out of even the convulsive primal screams of "Les Noces." The voice also has a "presence," which bodes well for her Tosca and Desdemona (her Met debut in 1999). Serjuk, very young, has the goods, but she has a way to go to develop something distinct from her current generic (and not especially well-projected) mezzo. Lutsjuk - a brave man, who gives his age as 43 - produces a voice a cut above the "Russian tenor" sound, although he shares the high-pitched quality of his brethren. He has a strong stage presence and brings life into every note. Aleksashkin is fine, although all the voice is in the middle range; he seems to lack power in both high and low notes. The four Russians had the advantage of singing in their own language - the chorus didn't. And yet, they did wondrously well, mastering not only the impossibly varied rhythms, sharp, persistent syncopation, and constantly changing moods, but also the text. That's a lot to say because. there is so much of it. Michael Steinberg, who knows about such things, says that "Les Noces" has the most words per note, and he counted them. He found 2,500 words in the Stravinsky, against the 1,000-word "Dichterliebe," which is roughly of the same performance length. To sing so much text in such jerky setting, and to maintain clear diction would be admirable enough, but the Symphony Chorus went well beyond technique, and produced a grand performance. And then, for the broad, sweeping grandeur of "Symphony of Psalms," in MTT's hushed, moving interpretation, the chorus gave its very best. The first half of the program was a reprise of the Symphony's 1997 "Persephone" (and its triple-Grammy-winning recording) with tenor Stuart Neill and narrator Stephanie Cosserat. She was even better this time - with an elegant delivery, which can only be described by a French phrase that's on the tip of my tongue but no further, alas - and he wasn't. The Philadelphia tenor has a powerful voice, but he sounded raspy, especially at the beginning, with occasional breaks in long phrases - perhaps he is yet another victim of the cold epidemic caused by the drop from yesterday's 80-degree high to tonight's 30-degree low. Still, here's a singer with a range from the lyric to the verismo repertoire. The last time we heard the MTT-SFS "Persephone," four years ago, there was too much going on "extra-musically." It was the very first concert after the orchestra's bitter 10-week strike, and the question on everybody's mind was if things can be put together again after a great fall. We now know that the orchestra came out of that crisis playing better than ever - and in a whole new, and outstanding, labor-management relationship - but that night, it was all up in the air. Another "distraction" was the Bach Magnificat, with Lorraine Hunt, no less - "an act" hard to follow. Tonight, it was much easier to pay attention just to the music, to this still-neglected and rarely-performed Stravinsky, and it went extremely well. Thanks to MTT at his best, the orchestra and chorus both operating at the highest level, this three-concerts-in-one was exceptional: the three works occupy such different worlds (by topic, by style, by atmosphere) that no music event can be more varied. What was similar, in the end, was the quality of performance.