Musorgsky reviews

‘Mariss Jansons’s Oslo Philharmonic recording of Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition emerged as the lead recommendation some years back, but I’m certain that LSO/Noseda would be the one now.’

Musorgsky/Tchaikovsky
Musorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4
London Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda
LSO Live LSO0810 (hybrid CD/SACD)   74:18 mins

Given the grandiose finale of Musorgsky’s Pictures, one might have thought this a more logical ending for this album than Prokofiev’s feather-light tribute to Haydn. In this instance it seems to be a policy of ‘saving the best till last’ (or going by order of composition?).

Three years ago, Zig-Zag issued an intriguing performance on period instruments of the Ravel orchestration of Musorgsky’s Pictures, conducted by Jos van Immerseel. Now Immerseel’s regular piano duo piano partner, Claire Chevallier, follows suit by giving us an equally absorbing historically-informed account of the composer’s original score. Using an 1875 Becker piano manufactured in St Petersburg, she demonstrates the virtues of performing this masterpiece on a Russian instrument with which Musorgsky would have been completely familiar.

Eight years after he conducted a blistering rendition of Pictures at an Exhibition with the Simon Bolívar Orchestra, recorded live on DVD at the Salzburg Festival, Gustavo Dudamel conjures up an equally fine performance of this orchestral showpiece from the Vienna Philharmonic.

Still singing in 2016 at the age of 85, the distinguished Czech bass is caught in his prime in this ample and wide-ranging two-disc survey, which displays his intelligent interpretation to advantage.

George Hall

Hard-driven, exciting accounts of the two symphonies let down by flawed French orchestral playing. The Berlin Philharmonic is far more mellow in other items.  

Erik Levi

Stokowski’s arrangements added technicolour to music that was often pretty colourful already. The results – almost endearing in their unashamed excesses – are conveyed with some aplomb.

Jessica Duchen

The Musorgsky is idiosyncratic, with percussive effects added in some movements. Fluid, exciting accounts of the two Tchaikovsky symphonies but with muffled sound.

Erik Levi

Vintage Doráti: colourful interpretations, ultra-clear yet not clinical, with a classy orchestral response. Only Gunther Schuller’s brand of clever-clogs stylistic game-playing disappoints.

Malcolm Hayes 

Khatia Buniatishvili offers a very individual and often imaginative account of Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Whereas most pianists stride through the opening ‘Promenade’ with a real sense of purpose, Buniatishvili is much more pensive, presenting the musical argument in veiled colours. This dream-world is startlingly interrupted by an unusually sinister account of ‘Gnomus’ in which she marshals a formidably wide range of textures and colours to perfectly convey the malevolence in Musorgsky’s writing.

With hordes of orchestral recordings of Pictures at an Exhibition on the market, there needs to be good reason to consider yet another one in Ravel’s ubiquitous, not very Musorgsky-ish, insistently French arrangement. To Gergiev’s and the Mariinsky Orchestra’s credit, there’s nothing of the over-familiar warhorse in their approach. The playing here is poised, uninflated, and vividly characterised.

Musorgsky and Schumann may seem very strange bedfellows, their music stemming from completely different traditions. Yet hearing these two great 19th-century piano works side by side reveals closer connections than one might have expected. In particular, both composers grapple with the creative challenge of attempting to marry programmatic inspiration (the visual arts in the case of Musorgsky and poetry for Schumann) with intellectually satisfying musical structures.

Winner of the Leeds Piano Competition in 2012, Federico Colli launches his recording career with a well-chosen programme featuring three hugely demanding works that respond equally well to his special brand of poetic intensity. Countless are the versions of the Appassionata that thrash about restlessly, articulated by sforzandos hammered home with ferocity. How refreshing to experience, therefore, a thoughtful Appassionata that conveys its profoundly revolutionary zeal through ingenious fluctuations of texture and revelatory harmonic tectonics.

The excellence of Kirill Gerstein’s previous solo disc – featuring Schumann, Knussen and Liszt’s B minor Sonata – suggested that the two works on this new album would perfectly match his abilities. With that in mind, his uncertain pacing of the opening Promenade to Pictures might suggest Musorgsky himself, a little worse for drink, making his way into the gallery; even the deliberate and lurching ‘Gnomus’ hints at Musorgsky’s empathy with the misshapen nutcracker design.