Ashkenazy tells us in the notes with this CD (incidentally they are both extensive and interesting with excellent thumbnail descriptions of each picture—one day we shall, hopefully, get a record which includes reproductions) that he always thinks in terms of orchestral colour when at the keyboard, and that in making his own orchestration he has ''been guided by the deeper undercurrents of this predominantly dark-coloured piece''. To have his piano version and orchestration together is salutary, and the CD banding allows one to move back and forward at will. Interestingly, tempos in the orchestral performance, except for the opening ''Promenade'', are in all cases marginally slower. I must say at once that I don't think Ashkenazy's scoring an improvement on Ravel's, and only in the latter section which includes ''Catacombae'', ''Cum mortuis in lingua mortua'' and Baba Yaga's hut (quite the most successful part of both performances) do the Mussorgskian undercurrents surface perceptibly.
The piano version, refined in detail, and strikingly spontaneous in the way the music flows on from picture to picture, does not tell the whole story. Anyone who has experienced Sviatoslav Richter's account, live in a concert hall, will know there is a dimension missing. Richter's characterization is bolder, stronger in contrast, with the closing ''Great Gate of Kiev'' breathtakingly overwhelming. Ashkenazy seems slightly uncomfortable with the hammered, repeated chords in the finale and doesn't really bring the closing pages off. In the orchestral version he is very broad, and the scoring emphasizes the religious connotation of Mussorgsky's use of a Russian Orthodox chant.
Both Ashkenazy recordings were made in the Kingsway Hall, within a few months of each other in 1982. The orchestral sound is characteristic of this venue, richly textured, yet brilliant, with glowing detail. The piano, however, is less convincingly balanced. There is a curious 'ping' on the transients of the very opening note and the treble has just a touch of hardness at times, while the middle and bass sonority is full and spreads a little. One final, but not, unimportant point. Ashkenazy's score corrects ''a number of textual errors which probably resulted from his [Ravel's] use of a poor edition of the piano score''.'