Mussorgsky: Pictuers at an Exhibition; Kodaly; Prokofiev Cleveland Orchestra; Szell

The Mussorgsky Pictures is the most unusual and most interesting reading of the set. Starting with a carefully molded legato opening trumpet tune, Celibidache puts forth an amply lyrical interpretation, one awash in warm, glowing orchestral colors that, unlike in his Scheherazade, do not get lost in the wash. Every number receives special attention to its particular nuance, Bydlo being just one example, while the finale’s grand solemnity (and massive slowness) makes for a truly moving conclusion.

Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra celebrate Mussorgsky with the release of two of his most cherished works, 'Pictures at an Exhibition' and 'Night on a Bare Mountain' (performed here in Mussorgsky’s original version). Gergiev is at his finest conducting these paragons of Mussorgsky’s work, featured alongside which are the seldom heard 'Songs and Dances of Death', composed during the years 1875 to 1877 and left languishing unpublished during the composer’s lifetime. One of Mussorgsky’s most powerful compositions, each song deals with death in a poetic manner reflecting experiences not uncommon in 19th century Russia: child death, death in youth, drunken misadventure and war.

Modest Mussorgsky was a man of great friendships and great loyalties. When his friend the Russian painter Victor Hartman died in 1873 of a heart ailment at the age of thirty-nine, Mussorgsky's grief knew no limits. Hartman's drawings and pastels, all in a style très russe, were exhibited in a St. Petersburg gallery shortly after his death, and Mussorgsky decided to pay a musical tribute to his friend by writing a suite for piano, setting to music selected paintings from Hartman's exhibition. This suite, published under the tide Pictures at an Exhibition, became very popular, and acquired an even greater popularity through Maurice Ravel's dazzling orchestration.

The NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo is a Japanese broadcast orchestra based in Tokyo. The orchestra gives concerts in several venues, including the NHK Hall, Suntory Hall, and the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall…

For this second collaboration between the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Emmanuel Krivine and Zig-Zag Territoires, two major Russian works were chosen. Both make the orchestra sound sumptuous with, for the first, the complicity of that fantastic colourist and orchestrator Maurice Ravel, and for the second, the skill of a composer nicknamed ‘the magician of the orchestra’. Emmanuel Krivine excels in these works, which demand much of all the musicians and necessitate as much commitment as perspicacity from the conductor, at the service of scores magnifying the fantastic musical instrument that is the modern symphony orchestra.

It's hard to believe that any pianist, living or dead (or, probably, yet-to-be-born) could match, much less surpass, these performances. It was Richter, after all, who made Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition almost as important an item in the standard repertory of the piano as Ravel's orchestration is in that of the orchestra. And it was Richter's performances of it, as well as his example, that have ignited the interest of subsequent generations of pianists in the Bunte Blätter, heretofore one of the most obscure works in the Schumann canon.

In my opinion, Sviatoslav Richter played these two Russian monuments better than anyone else on record. However, he played them even better in concert than he did in these excellent studio recordings. The ultimate Richter Pictures (the 1958 Sofia version on Philips) keeps bouncing in and out of print, but it's currently available and it's the great Pictures performance of all time. However you hear Richter play these two pieces, though, do hear him. He will probably convince you, at least while you're listening, that the Tchaikovsky is a much better piece than most musicologists seem to believe.