There is sometimes
an impression that these old recordings
hark back to the days when they did
things properly. In some cases early
recordings do indeed enshrine interpretations
by performers close to the composer
himself, but in the case of Mussorgsky
the "old" tradition doesn’t
help us all that much.
The problem is Rimsky-Korsakov.
It is true that there can be no "ur-Khovanshchina"
as there is an "ur-Boris",
since Mussorgsky did not quite complete
the work and in any case left it unorchestrated,
so whatever happens, we are going to
hear a few parts plus the entire orchestration
done by somebody else. Rimsky-Korsakov
was first off the mark, but it became
increasingly evident over the years
that he had bowdlerized the original
concept, just as he did with Boris.
In the absence of an authentic score,
modern productions tend to go for Shostakovich’s
version, sometimes with a few adjustments,
plus an ending provided by Stravinsky
for Diaghilev in 1913. If not the pioneer,
Claudio Abbado was certainly the conductor
who put this version on the musical
map; with both a CD and a DVD version
(with different casts), this is one
of the select works in which Abbado
has carved out a niche for himself so
overwhelmingly as to silence all opposition.
Estimable versions by Tchakarov and
Gergiev have made relatively little
impact. So if you want to hear "Khovanshchina"
at its best, it is to Abbado or perhaps
Gergiev (the Tchakarov, with Ghiaurov,
Milcheva and Ghiuselev, doesn’t seem
to be available at the moment) that
you must turn.
The earlier, Rimskyfied
versions, then, refer back to a mistaken
tradition, though they may contain notable
individual performances. Not that there
were many. The present version, presumably
the first, was followed by a Bolshoi
recording under Vassily Nebolsin in
1949, again with Mark Reizen as Dosifey.
Some time in the 1950s Decca recorded
the work in Belgrade as part of a series
of Russian operas set down there – in
those cold-war times, Tito’s Yugoslavia
was about the closest a Western company
could get to an authentic Russian opera
house. These Belgrade recordings tended
to be seen as stop-gaps even in their
day, and I am not aware of any attempt
to revive them in the CD era. In 1974,
near the close of his career, Boris
Khaikin returned to the work, this time
with the Bolshoi and a cast including
Irena Arkhipova as Marfa. He remained
faithful to the Rimsky version. The
epoch of Rimsky versions was closed
by a poorly-received 1976 recording
from Sofia under Atanas Margaritov.
The presence of Milcheva and Ghiuselev
in the cast might lend it some interest,
but they repeated their roles under
Tchakarov ten years later. There are
a few live versions around, official
or not, one of which I shall return
to.
The principal reason
for acquiring this set might well be
the Dosifey of Mark Reizen, a bass of
granitic power and magisterial authority.
It is indeed a magnificent assumption.
What he doesn’t quite have is
that extra dimension, that human warmth,
that enveloping, liquid depth that makes
you think you could dive into the sound,
that was the unique possession of the
Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff. It may
seem surprising that this greatly loved
singer, widely seen as the heir of Chaliapin
and surely the greatest of post-war
Russian-type basses, was asked to record
Boris twice over (and also all Mussorgsky’s
songs) but, so far as I can make out,
never set down Dosifey. However, a 1958
radio production from Rome under Artur
Rodzinski has been marketed on CD by
Video Arts. I had better say, in case
any readers seek this out, that my own
comparisons have been made with a taping
of my own from one of RAI’s periodic
re-broadcasts, so I can’t give any advice
as to the quality of the Video Arts
transfer except to say that a couple
of extracts heard courtesy of Amazon
suggest it is cleaner and less distorted
than mine. If it’s all up to this standard,
it can be safely bought. There can be
no doubt, in any case, that Christoff
produces a range of vocal colouring
and dynamic shading which never fails
to fascinate, and by his side Reizen,
impressive as he is, seems monochrome.
However, Khovanshchina
is not Dosifey’s opera the way Boris
Godunov is Boris’s opera; the two Khovanskys,
father and son, Golitsin, Shaklovity
and above all Marfa all have important
roles, and this is also in many ways
an ensemble opera. But I have to say
that, while the present set testifies
to a generally high standard at the
Kirov, voice for voice I’d go for Rodzinski
for a "historical" Khovanshchina.
Sofya Preobrazhenskaya is undoubtedly
an asset here, a powerful Russian mezzo,
as ringingly secure in her upper notes
as she is sonorous in her chest tones.
It is impassioned singing as well as
secure, yet I find more shading in Rodzinski’s
Irene Companez. A rather mysterious
singer, this; Rodzinski must have admired
her since she had sung in Alexander
Nevsky for him four months earlier,
also in Rome (this has been issued by
Stradivarius). For EMI she sang the
small role of La Cieca in the 1959 Callas
Gioconda. She also sang in a
version of Vivaldi’s "Juditha
Triumphans" recorded under
Alberto Zedda with the Milan Angelicum
forces and apparently "published
in 1995". However, since the cast
also includes Oralia Dominguez, and
the Angelicum orchestra was disbanded
before 1995 anyway, I suggest it may
date from no later than the early 1960s.
And after that she faded from view.
On the whole, Russia
seems to have been better endowed with
basses and baritones than with tenors.
Boris Freidkov is an amply sonorous
Ivan Khovansky. Seasoned opera buffs
may experience more excitement at hearing
that Mario Petri, a magnificent Boris
in his own right, takes the part under
Rodzinski, while the two tenors of the
Rome performance, Amedeo Berdini and
Mirto Picchi, stalwarts of many an operatic
venture in the great days of the RAI,
prove the virtues of solid Italian bel
canto training over their somewhat nasal
Russian counterparts. Similar comparisons
extend to the minor roles, the Emma
here being very squeaky compared with
Iolanda Mancini.
But perhaps the real
reason for the superior shading and
expressiveness of the Rome performance
lies in the conducting. The Naxos booklet
rightly refers to Khaikin as a "distinguished"
conductor, and he is certainly nothing
less. Everything is firmly under control,
each act is shaped clearly, every phrase
is carefully considered. But Rodzinski
was a "great" conductor, and
it shows. Take Act 1 Scene 1: the outburst
at track 4 is whipped up a little more
with Rodzinski (Khaikin 02:00, Rodzinski
01:50), whereas at track 5 Rodzinski
holds back with impressive deliberation
(Khaikin 0:53, Rodzinsky 0:58) only
to plunge ahead at track 6 (Khaikin
04:18, Rodzinski 03:40). Taken individually,
in each case the music seems just that
little bit more effective at Rodzinski’s
tempi; taken as a whole it amounts to
a more varied and imaginative narration
of the events. Contrary to his reputation
as a martinet, Rodzinski is more often
slower than the reverse. In the scene
where Prince Andrey attempts to seduce
Emma he gives the singers time to make
use of their words, extending Khaikin’s
04:09 to 05:22, while in the Persian
Dances he extracts, from an orchestra
which is theoretically inferior to Khaikin’s
Kirov band, a performance which rises
from extreme sultriness to galvanising
passion with a magic that even Stokowski
might not have disowned. Khaikin sounds
academic by comparison.
In the last act, however,
Khaikin comes into his own, in the sense
that he is offering something quite
different, rather than a slightly less
good realization of a basically similar
idea. From the outset, in Dosifey’s
great solo, he has his strings meandering
almost without nuance, the sort of tense
numbness we know from several Shostakovich
openings; Symphonies 10 and 11 most
notably. Rodzinski plays this music
more swiftly, with hairpin crescendos
and diminuendos and more expressive
vibrato. Thereafter, both conductors
are true to their conception, Khaikin
allowing the final tragedy to build
up slowly, inexorably, Rodzinski pressing
on dramatically. And I’m afraid to say
that in the interests of taut drama,
Rodzinski snips several bits out along
the way. He is six minutes shorter than
Khaikin in this act; I’d say the faster
tempi and cuts contribute to the difference
in about equal measure. Though, as a
Westerner, I perhaps thrill more to
Rodzinski, I wonder if Khaikin’s bleakness
is not closer to Mussorgsky’s own vision.
All the same, for a
historical recording to supplement one
of the modern Shostakovich/Stravinsky
versions, I’d go for Rodzinski; after
all, if it’s Khaikin who interests you,
you will want his final thoughts, in
stereo. But there are other drawbacks
with Rodzinski. I’ve mentioned the cuts
in Rodzinski’s last act, but in fact
only Act One goes unscathed; at 138:33
for the whole opera this does have the
advantage that it all goes snugly onto
two CDs, but some of the cuts are swingeing
and involve Dosifey’s and Marfa’s music
as well as the more expendable characters
- Susanna disappears altogether. The
other drawback is that it is sung in
Italian. But if the only extant recording
of Boris Christoff singing this music
has him singing it in Italian, I feel
that room should be found on our shelves
for it nonetheless. True enthusiasts
will want Reizen as well, of course.
The actual recording of the 1946 version
is amazingly good; we are used to the
idea that Russian Melodiya LPs sounded
ghastly until at least the 1960s; this
has a bit of distortion, it’s true,
but the voices are well caught without
stridency - careful work from Ward Marston,
no doubt - and the orchestral sound
is generally full and clear.
Though Naxos have been
obliged to add a third CD, they certainly
haven’t wasted it. After the 26 minutes
of Act 5 we get two appendixes. The
first has Marfa’s two major arias plus
Shaklovity’s sung by other notable singers
of the day; Obukhova has a style similar
to Preobrazhenskaya’s. Then we have
a series of Mussorgsky songs. First,
there are two each from Reizen and Preobrazhenskaya
- I had promised myself that by the
end of this review I would be able to
type this name without checking it letter
by letter, but there’s my first New
Year’s resolution gone up in smoke -
both more communicative in the intimate
circumstances of having just a pianist
to accompany them than on the great
operatic stage. Then an extract from
the great Chaliapin is followed by three
less well-known singers.
At this point I must
complain that Naxos, having provided
if not a libretto to the opera, at least
a very helpful synopsis, plus an introduction
to the opera and the major artists heard
in it, now leave us high and dry. Mussorgsky’s
"realistic" song style doesn’t
lend itself to listening as pure music
as does, say, Tchaikovsky’s, where there
is much to enjoy even if you have no
idea what the words are saying. In this
instance, the singers can all be heard
characterising like mad, and it would
be lovely to know what it’s all about.
And also to know who the singers are!
From the internet, I can give a modicum
of information:
IGOR GORIN was born
in Poland in 1904, studied in Vienna
and emigrated to the USA in 1933. He
retired from singing in 1966 and taught
voice at the University of Arizona till
his death in 1982.
VLADIMIR ROSING was
born in St. Petersburg in 1890. A man
of many parts he is variously listed
as tenor, bass (he seems to be a bass-baritone
here), impresario, producer and conductor.
By 1915 he was in London, doing a bit
of all these things, in 1921 he went
to the USA and became director of the
Eastman School of Music in Rochester.
In 1930 he was back in England organizing
the British Music-Drama Company, with
Albert Coates as Music Director. He
died in Los Angeles in 1963. True to
his larger-than-life image, he is the
most histrionic of the artists here.
To my Western ears, Nicolai Gedda proved
that "The He-goat" can be
characterized adequately without sacrificing
musicality and voice production, but
maybe it sounds different if you understand
the words.
MASCIA PREDIT was born
in Latvia in 1912 and seems to be still
alive. A sweet soprano in 1950, by 1971
she had dropped to the deep mezzo whose
mournful tones can be heard singing
"Deserted Beach" in Visconti’s
film "Death in Venice".
Christopher Howell
see also review
by Goran Forsling
Kirov Chorus and Orchestra, Leningrad/Boris Khaikin
