Mussorgsky Songs
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Modest Mussorgsky
Label: Références
Magazine Review Date: 8/1989
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 192
Mastering:
ADD
Catalogue Number: 763025-2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Sadly rustled the leaves |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Boris Christoff, Bass Gerald Moore, Piano Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Where art thou, little star |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Hour of jollity |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Tell me why, o maiden |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| I have many palaces and gardens |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| What are words of love to you? |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| King Saul |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Boris Christoff, Bass French Radio National Orchestra Georges Tzipine, Conductor Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Old man's song |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| But if I could meet thee again |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Wild wind blows |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Boris Christoff, Bass French Radio National Orchestra Georges Tzipine, Conductor Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Night |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Kalistratushka |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Salammbô, Movement: Balearic Song |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (A) Prayer |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Outcast |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Lullaby |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Dear one, why are thine eyes sometimes so cold? |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| From my tears |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Gopak |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Boris Christoff, Bass French Radio National Orchestra Georges Tzipine, Conductor Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Darling Savishna |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Seminarist |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Hebrew song |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Magpie |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Gathering mushrooms |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Feast |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Ragamuffin |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) he-goat: a worldly story |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Garden by the Don |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Classicist |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Orphan |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Child's song |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Nursery |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Eremushka's lullaby |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Peepshow |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Evening Song |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Forgotten |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Sunless |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Songs and Dances of Death |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Boris Christoff, Bass French Radio National Orchestra Georges Tzipine, Conductor Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Epitaph |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Sphinx |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Not like thunder, trouble struck |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Softly the spirit flew up to heaven |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Is spinning man's work |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| It scatters and breaks |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Vision |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Pride |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| (The) Wanderer |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| On the Dnieper |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Alexandre Labinsky, Piano Boris Christoff, Bass Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
| Mephistopheles' song of the flea |
Modest Mussorgsky, Composer
Boris Christoff, Bass French Radio National Orchestra Georges Tzipine, Conductor Modest Mussorgsky, Composer |
Author: Alan Blyth
This set, unavailable on LP in this country for many years, is undoubtedly one of the all-time glories of the gramophone, it should be in any worthwhile song collection. Listening through the set without interruption gives one a marvellous idea of the range and variety of Mussorgsky's writing and leaves one almost speechless at the virtuosity of Christoff. This is unquestionably the bass's most important legacy and I hope now that it reappears in these excellent CD transfers it will have greater success than when it was first issued in LP form some thirty years ago; it deserves as much.
Mussorgsky's range of characterization is veritably Dostoyevskian. Even on the first disc, in the earlier and slightly less remarkable songs, the composer offers a range of personalities and emotions as then unknown in Russian song. There are the war-likeKing Saul, the sad figure of Wilhelm Meister in the Song of the Old Man (what we know as ''An die Turen''), the desolate landscape of The Wind Howls, the folk-hero Calistratus. Then we hear a wide variety of styles from the recitative-like Cast-off Woman to the gentle lyricism of Night. In this last song Christoff produces that magical mezza voce of his to suggest the intimacy of the loved one portrayed within. But, by then—the eleventh song—he has already given us an amazing palette of sound-colours, everything from the utterly ferocious to the gentlest whisper.
With the second disc, we come to many of the better-known songs but few of them have ever been better interpreted than here. In Hopak, the bass has a rollicking time of it, relishing every word. In Savishna, a wonderfully vivid song, he subtly portrays the idiot. He catches the bitter satire of The Classicist and the humour of The Seminarist, where the Latin recitation is gleefully projected. The rather weak Puppet Show is almost saved here by Christoff's identity with its twists of irony. Then he can change style again to produce a hypnotically sweet tone for Evening Song, a tender lyric built on only five notes. But the centrepiece of this disc is, of course, the Nursery cycle, where Christoff manages to adapt his big tone for a convincing impersonation of a small boy. I also like the way he finds yet other voices for the Nurse and for the Mother. Indeed he characterizes so pointedly that one can really believe he is before one making the appropriate facial grimaces. This is a tour de force.
Similarly rewarding are his performances of the Sunless and Songs and Dances of Death cycles. He catches all the bleak gloom of the first, the histrionic force of the second, where his variety of timbre is once more astonishing, but in the Songs and Dances he uses a corrupt orchestration. Mussorgsky wanted to orchestrate this set, but he would surely have done it a different way. Rimsky and others often altered and softened Mussorgsky's harmonies, it is surprising that such a sensitive artist as Christoff didn't realize that. After these two cycles, Mussorgsky's inspiration seemed to falter, though On the Dnieper, a lyrical piece of surpassing beauty, and the ever-popular Song of the Flea, which ends the set, are remarkable achievements in their way and are here excellently interpreted. Labinsky is a vivid and imaginative partner, although the recording favours the voice—and quite right too.
It is a pity the issue doesn't print Christoff's original notes on the songs. But help is to hand in Calvocoressi's essay (added to by Gerald Abraham) on the songs in the Dent Master Musician series. That is well worth having by you when you listen to this irreplaceable set.'
Mussorgsky's range of characterization is veritably Dostoyevskian. Even on the first disc, in the earlier and slightly less remarkable songs, the composer offers a range of personalities and emotions as then unknown in Russian song. There are the war-like
With the second disc, we come to many of the better-known songs but few of them have ever been better interpreted than here. In Hopak, the bass has a rollicking time of it, relishing every word. In Savishna, a wonderfully vivid song, he subtly portrays the idiot. He catches the bitter satire of The Classicist and the humour of The Seminarist, where the Latin recitation is gleefully projected. The rather weak Puppet Show is almost saved here by Christoff's identity with its twists of irony. Then he can change style again to produce a hypnotically sweet tone for Evening Song, a tender lyric built on only five notes. But the centrepiece of this disc is, of course, the Nursery cycle, where Christoff manages to adapt his big tone for a convincing impersonation of a small boy. I also like the way he finds yet other voices for the Nurse and for the Mother. Indeed he characterizes so pointedly that one can really believe he is before one making the appropriate facial grimaces. This is a tour de force.
Similarly rewarding are his performances of the Sunless and Songs and Dances of Death cycles. He catches all the bleak gloom of the first, the histrionic force of the second, where his variety of timbre is once more astonishing, but in the Songs and Dances he uses a corrupt orchestration. Mussorgsky wanted to orchestrate this set, but he would surely have done it a different way. Rimsky and others often altered and softened Mussorgsky's harmonies, it is surprising that such a sensitive artist as Christoff didn't realize that. After these two cycles, Mussorgsky's inspiration seemed to falter, though On the Dnieper, a lyrical piece of surpassing beauty, and the ever-popular Song of the Flea, which ends the set, are remarkable achievements in their way and are here excellently interpreted. Labinsky is a vivid and imaginative partner, although the recording favours the voice—and quite right too.
It is a pity the issue doesn't print Christoff's original notes on the songs. But help is to hand in Calvocoressi's essay (added to by Gerald Abraham) on the songs in the Dent Master Musician series. That is well worth having by you when you listen to this irreplaceable set.'
Mussorgsky Songs
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