{"product_id":"antonio-pappano_rimsky-korsakov-scheherazade-moussorgski-une-nuit-sur-le-mont-chauve-1867-1880_2024_war","title":"Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Moussorgski: Une Nuit sur Le Mont Chauve (1867 \u0026 1880)","description":"'Shéhérazade' by Rimsky-Korsakov and 'A Night on Bald Mountain' by Mussorgsky are two of the most popular works in the Russian repertoire. Sir Antonio Pappano therefore seeks to strengthen the bonds that unite them by programming them together. He also offers us the opportunity to hear two rare versions of Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. One is for orchestra (1867) and the other for orchestra and choir (as conceived for the opera \"The Fair at Sorochyntsi\" (1880). This second version was never performed during his lifetime due to its highly atypical character for the era. Mussorgsky (1839-1881) and Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) were both members of the group of Russian composers known as The Five or The Mighty Handful (the others were Borodin, Balakirev, and Cui). Rimsky-Korsakov, a highly sophisticated musician, recognized the surprising talent and originality of his gruff, non-conformist colleague, whose works seemed a challenge to the musical establishment. After Mussorgsky's premature death, Rimsky-Korsakov hoped to secure a future for two of his most striking scores — the opera Boris Godunov and the symphonic poem Night on Bald Mountain — by reworking them, making them more conventionally appealing and more easily accessible. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote: \"My conscience will be at peace, for I have done for his music and his memory everything I was capable of doing and that I had to do out of duty.\" Rimsky-Korsakov's version of 'Night on Bald Mountain' remains popular, but it does not appear on this album. Instead, the program offers two different iterations of Mussorgsky's own work. The first, a purely orchestral version, was written in the 1860s. It is inspired by a lost play, The Witch by Georgi Mengden, and depicts a witches' sabbath. A few years later, around 1880, Mussorgsky revised it, creating a work for orchestra, adult choir, children's choir, and solo singer (on this recording, the Bulgarian bass Dejan Vatchkov). This is an episode from his opera The Fair at Sorochyntsi, based on a play by Nikolai Gogol: Satan appears with his diabolical hordes during the nocturnal hours of St. John's Eve, at the time of the summer solstice. Mussorgsky never completed The Fair at Sorochyntsi and this second version of 'Night on Bald Mountain' was orchestrated by Vissarion Shebalin, who produced an edition of the opera in 1930. As Antonio Pappano says: \"It's a shock, after being accustomed to Rimsky-Korsakov's upholstered edition of 'Night on Bald Mountain', to hear this almost skeletal orchestrated music.... The sounds don't blend and the rhythms simply emerge in a different way. The habitual lack of sophistication in Mussorgsky's writing creates a very unusual bite for the time when this music was composed.... The way he treats rhythmic gestures is almost a prefiguration of Stravinsky... Mussorgsky's harmonies are astonishingly non-conformist for the era. Especially when he writes blocks of chords, they are closely linked to the music of the Russian Orthodox Church... It is stripped down and without frills, with absolute rawness... It's as if the unvarnished frankness of his music reflected his own raw and difficult character in life.\" In contrast, Rimsky-Korsakov's iridescent symphonic suite Scheherazade, which tells four tales from the Thousand and One Nights, is, in Antonio Pappano's words, \"a superb showpiece for the orchestra.\" He adds that \"it is technically very difficult, just as it is musically for the conductor who must convey the sense of storytelling convincingly... It is full of pictorial images... There are often chamber music textures in Scheherazade... They seduce the listener's ear — what a contrast with Mussorgsky! But of course, it takes a first-rate orchestra to achieve these effects. It is especially in the most transparent and singing moments of the score that the quality of the orchestra is truly decisive. Italian orchestral musicians are known for their sound and singing style, so I find this piece ideal for the Orchestra of Santa Cecilia.\"","brand":"Antonio Pappano","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57531390067032,"sku":null,"price":20240322.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/vinyles.com\/en\/products\/antonio-pappano_rimsky-korsakov-scheherazade-moussorgski-une-nuit-sur-le-mont-chauve-1867-1880_2024_war","provider":"Vinyles.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}