Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2; Mussorgsky: Night On Bare Mountain; Pictures At An Exhibition (2011)

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Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2; Mussorgsky: Night On Bare Mountain; Pictures At An Exhibition (2011)

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Tchaikovsky’s most overtly nationalistic symphony, his 2nd known as the ‘Little Russian’ uses folk songs from the Ukraine, and is the nearest the composer came to the musical and cultural ideals proposed by ‘The Mighty Handful’. This group of composers – Borodin, Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui and Mussorgsky rejected the Western influences on Russian culture, and looked to the music, folklore and history of Mother Russia for inspiration. Mussorgsky, probably the most naturally gifted of this group composed A Night on the Bare Mountain in 1867, and the original version heard here was not published until 1968. It is a striking work, quite shocking in it’s modernity, and a world away from Rimsky’s better known re-composition of the piece. The suite Pictures at an Exhibition was written for piano in 1874 and inspired by paintings by his friend Victor Harmann displays Mussorgsky’s great gift of graphic evocation. Ravel’s masterly orchestration was made in 1922.

Composer: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky
Conductor: Kirill Karabits
Orchestra/Ensemble: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

Reviews: Kirill Karabits was appointed principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for the 2009–10 season while still in his early 30s. The present concert is centered on his Ukrainian nationality, even though it has no works by actual Ukrainian composers. “Little Russia” was an early name for Ukraine, Mussorgsky’s Pictures has its “Great Gate of Kiev,” and his Night on Bald Mountain refers to an actual location near Kiev as well.


Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” Symphony has long been my favorite among his three early works in the genre. Even though its subtitle was added by the critic Nikolai Kashkin, somehow its folk-inspired melodies and the mournful atmosphere of its opening movement evoke Ukraine to me as does no other musical work. Karabits clearly knows the measure of the piece, bringing out its every subtlety. His Andantino marziale is perfectly paced, and he even makes the somewhat overblown finale cohere, a bit of a challenge for any conductor. He draws a sound from the brass that borders on Slavic, but minus the shrill timbre that characterizes some Russian brass sections. I no longer have the Bernstein and Doráti recordings that I cut my teeth on in this work, but according to my recollection, Karabits’s reading compares very favorably to theirs. It has the added bonus of superb sonics and orchestral balances.


For those who know only Rimsky-Korsakov’s substantial rewriting of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, hearing this recording of the original score will be quite a revelation for the listener. Actually, there are several so-called “original” versions, including a later one that Mussorgsky incorporated into his opera Sorotchinsky Fair. Regardless of which of these should be considered top contenders for the term “original” (should Mussorgsky’s first or final thoughts on the piece get the appellation?), every one of them evinces an originality several orders of magnitude above Rimsky’s tamed-down version of the piece. Mussorgsky’s whole-tone scale (or a variant of the octatonic scale, depending on which original version one hears) was changed to a chromatic scale in Rimsky’s version, which also substitutes a pianissimo ending for Mussorgsky’s original loud one. There is actually a lot of music in the work that Rimsky simply removed, including a couple of really catchy melodies, and his orchestration is purely his own, with little resemblance to what Mussorgsky wrote. Christoph von Dohnányi has also recorded this same original version with the Cleveland Orchestra. Both his and the Karabits under review are fine renditions, with Dohnányi gaining a slight advantage in the level of terror evoked.


Karabits’s approach to Pictures is well within the established performance practice of the Ravel version of the work. His is a refined and polished performance, with careful attention to detail (my practice in all the reviews I write of this work is to follow the recording with the appropriate score). The pacing is well conceived, and all of the lines are clearly articulated. There is elegant solo work by members of the orchestra—the saxophone in “Il vecchio Castello,” the tuba in “Byd?o,” the trumpet in “Goldenberg”—and the tempi are generally on the brisk side (“Limoges” gets one of the quicker readings I’ve encountered). The tremolo string entrance in “Cum mortuis” is virtually inaudible, producing exactly the right backdrop for the entrance of the winds. The only place where I feel that Karabits miscalculates is the bassoon entrance in measure 11 of “Goldenberg,” where it is a little too prominent. The reading generally ranks up there with the best I’ve heard, even though there are many fine renditions of this warhorse.


All in all, this disc is well worth picking up if the repertory appeals to you. The oddity of the lot is the original version of Night. If Karabits had seen fit to record also the seldom-heard but very worthwhile original version of the Tchaikovsky Second (recorded only, as far as I know, by Geoffrey Simon on Chandos), and one of the lesser-heard orchestrations of Pictures, I might have put this CD into the must-own category. As it is, my recommendation is tempered only by the ubiquity of the repertory.