Last week I did not have a change to play music home but during this weekend I eventually had a change to spin some records. I bought last week a record that I was hunting for a while and was eagerly expected to hear it. It was Nicolay Golovanov’s performance of Mussorgsky “Night on Bald Mountain”. Whoever knows Golovanov’s craziness would understand my expectations…

Unfortunately my expectations were not fulfilled. The Golovanov’s “Night…” was melodic and musical, almost like the Stokovsky version… Knowing quite a few good performances of the “Night…” and deeply inside considering Mussorgsky as one of the greatest natural-gifted composer ever was born, I wondering if I ever will be able to find a good performance of the Rimksy-Korsakov’s orchestrated Mussorgsky “Night on Bald Mountain”.

I think the person who broke my virginity about the Mussorgsky “Night on Bald Mountain” was Claudio Abbado, and since I head what he did with this work any other interpretations of the “Night…” become too bored to me.

I remember how it started.  It was 1999; summer, Sunday and I stooped by in Cambridge’s “The Stereo Jack” – a wonderful jazz record shop. I picked the few records and a CD “Claudio Abbado conducting Mussorgsky” with LSO. At that time I has a wonderful car playback (Utopia speakers, very properly installed and vacuum tube amplification – everything very nicely sounding). While I was maneuvering out of the parking lot I put the Abbado’s CD in and … was shocked from the very first accords how phenomenally different and insultingly wonderful it was. Abbado was crashing through very complex for performing Mussorgsky’s choral peaces with a force of a good size tornado and with a genteelness and confidence of mama-lion who knows that she has no natural enemies in Serengeti. The London’s Symphony Chorus was phenomenal as well, it is shame that Russian can’t sing so “interestingly”.

I tell you that it was so good that I parked my car back and spent the entire hour sitting in my car, listening the Abbado’s Mussorgsky. However, the biggest hit was the cut with “Night on Bald Mountain”. At that time I did not read the CD’s notes (hate listening and reading) and did not know that Abbado performed the original, not edited by Rimksy-Korsakov version. I thought that it was juts an idiosyncratic Abbado’s interpretation and I was listening keeping admitting for myself not brilliant and smart it was. Eventually I learned way tit was, got the LPs of this CD and few of them (including a sealed one) permanently lent on my shelf with the best performances ever.

So, how Mussorgsky should sound? Get Richter’s performance of the “Pictures” in Sofia for piano music. If you want to hear the symphonic Mussorgsky then get Abbado with LSO. Make it loud! It is an amassing ride!

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

The WHRB juts broadcasted the Esa-Pekka Salonen’s debut with San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Esa-Pekka Salone is musical director of Las Angeles and he brought, among other things, his own composition “Insomnia”. The Insomnia was very nicely performed, in fact very-very nicely! Ironically the nice performance of the Insomnia, from my point of view was due to squashed sound of orchestra’s bass and the drum section completely imbedded into the inner-sound of mid night hallucinations.

However in the first section the very same orchestra tried to run over the Mussorgsky “Night on Bald Mountain”. It was kind of desirers as the dense and condensed bass of the Insomnia-tunes SFO (Wager's tubas?) was completely wrong for the Mussorgsky’s work . However, the big big big however….

The San Francisco Symphony this time played the original Mussorgsky score, not the Rimsky-Korsakov alternation. No mater how “organish” the SFO sounded but still… what a phenomenal music the original score is!!!

I do not know what king Spirits of Darkness and Witches and the other reps of the dark forces Mussorgsky meant but I am laughing to healing this music like crazy. I find the original scores of the Mussorgsky “Night on Bald Mountain” extremely happy and gloriously joyful. It is not the celebratory joyful. It is not in the “Master and Margarita’s” ways, not in the Faust, answered by Mephistopheles: "'I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.” I feel that “Night on Bald Mountain” is superbly happy itself with any references to any reasoning. The more “hard” and “menacing” the “Night on Bald Mountain” tries to be the more reassuringly cheerful it sounds to me. Mussorgsky does it always. In his “Hat of Baba Yaga” Mussorgsky try to be “dark” but I find it incredibly blissful, not to say mockeshly cheerful music.

Listen the Mussorgsky’s original score and you might discover a new sounding of in the “Dark Forces”

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

The peoples who know me know that I “secretly” consider Mussorgsky as one of the most gifted natural composures even lived. To me listening Mussorgsky, in his original orchestration, is absolutely devilish fun.

In my own listening habits I usually from time to time (now for instance) dive into the “Mussorgsky week” when I listen only Mussorgsky’s sound. The Mussorgsky’s sound, once again: if it was not “brushed” by Rimsky-Korsakov or anyone else, is absolutely unique. I has very little resemblance to any other composers and it has more to do with “sound” of the prime tribes in Africa or the “sound” of the animals “prime scream”…

I love to be in my Mussorgsky Week. Usually during this period I develop affinity for unshaved women, walking instead of driving, eating a lot of sensual sushi and drink the things with a lot of unfiltered pulp…. 

The famed music critic of the end of 19 century Herman Laroche once was bitching that during the premier of Boris Godunov the audiences were not able to distinct the wrong notes played by orchestra from the wrong notes that were intentionally composed by Mussorgsky… As far as I concern it is one the greatest compliment to the composers…

mats wrote:

Good to hear about your week with Mussorgsky Romy.  I came upon a mono Leibowitz / RPO RCA the other day.  It has its moments IMHO.  There seems also to be a new HMV Richter Sofia recital cd from HMV:   http://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/1887441 So, what did you like this week?  Any rivals to Abbado?

Well, the Richter’s Sofia recital is one of the greatest recordings of 20 century and it would not be shame to own any single released of them. I do not own that “Japanese Sourced” disc, I defiantly should. I have a dozen or so LPs of the Sofia concert and a regular Philips CD release. I know Philips “pressed” the CD a number of times but I did not which one was better or worse – I head only one – it was not as good as should be but it was what it was. I hope the Japanese “pressed” it better.

I did not relay look for “any” rivals to the young Abbado. There was not a lot of Mussorgsky recorded in his own “unabashed” version. Mussorgsky mostly played edited by Rimsky-Korsakov. The Rimsky-Korsakov is fine himself but they are really are different composers. Mussorgsky always resented Rimsky-Korsakov's preoccupations with “techniques” and Mussorgsky sound has a lot of row energy that are not necessary compatible with conventional “techniques” of orchestration and rules of harmony.

So, this week I ridded over decent Mussorgsky. It was the Richter’s Sofia, Prague and Moscow consorts. It was Horowitz 1949 and 1951 recordings, it was Abbado (including his Mussorgsky with BPO –not available in US- freaking shame!!!), Svetlanov, Melik-Pashaev, Lloyd-Jones, some Mussorgsky operas… It is also same that no one have written any suites around the Boris Gobunov’s music – it this it a phenomenal material for a good suites collection.

In the end, I have privilege to understand Russian language and I adore Mussorgsky songs, particularly if they are performed properly (that pretty much eliminates Visnavskay and Rostropovich). I paled quite a lot of them: the “historical”  Boris Christoff, the surprisingly pleasant Sergei Leiferkus, the sensational contralto Ewa Podless, the spectacular Koslovsky, the insulting Chaliapin… so others

Mussorgsky composed 67 songs and his songs are superbly important as Mussorgsky mimic with sound phonetics of the Russian language.  It is like the Janacek’s songs… the length his instrumental phrases was deeply bound with phonics of Czech pronunciation and take his songs in Gorman or English for instance they instantly stop making any sense.

As some of you know I do not like the orchestrated “Pictures”… There are a half dozen different orchestrated versions, including a concert version for a piano and orchestra but I prefer to say with a simple piano as properly performed it is more “impressive”. Here are some my selected pictures. They are not in the firm order but still in some kind of semi-rational order

Sviatoslav Richter 1958 and 1956
Vladimir Horowitz 1949 and 1951
William Kapell 1951
Maria Yudina 1967
Vladimir Ashkenazy 1976 only, not the recording form the end of the 90s
Nikolai Demidenko 1997

Yes, in a way. To me, if to convert Mussorgsky to visual image it sounds like the Delacroix’s illustration to Goethe's Mephistopheles: