Mussorgsky: St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain, Etc

No work of Mussorgsky�s � even Mussorgsky�s � has a more tangled history than St John�s Night on the Bare Mountain, and the complexities are reflected in its recordings. A long and tortuous story must be cut short. In 1860, Mussorgsky told Balakirev that he planned a piece �on Mengden�s drama The Witches� (no one ever seems to have found a copy of this mysterious work). Rimsky-Korsakov, whose memory was not always reliable, claims in My Musical Life that in 1866-7 he had heard a version for piano and orchestra based on Liszt�s Totentanz (which Mussorgsky would not then have known). However, in 1867 Mussorgsky did write the orchestral Bare Mountain (which was first recorded by David Lloyd-Jones with the LPO for Philips, 6/72 � nla), but, 

dismayed by Balakirev�s withering comments, shelved it. Then, to the opera-ballet Mlada, commissioned in collaboration with Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui and Borodin, he contributed a scene, based on the orchestral piece and now lost, sometimes known as �The Sabbath of the Black Goat�.

This he adapted for the never-to-be-finished opera Sorochintsy Fair, for chorus and orchestra, as �The Young Peasant�s Dream� (or �Gritsko�s Dream�). Despite the title given it on the record (as above), it is this operatic vocal and choral scene which is here recorded. Based on it, Rimsky-Korsakov made the orchestral transcription which has been so widely performed and recorded (a good 50 recordings currently available). There is more to it than that; but all that need be added here is that there have been various versions of the opera: Cui (1917) and Tcherepnin (1923) took a hand, but the best known performing score is by Shebalin (1931), and his is the version of the Dream Scenes recorded by Zdenek Macal and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (Delos, 11/97). Further versions of the orchestral work that can be heard on record include those by Rene Leibowitz and, famously, Stokowski; there are others which depart in one way or another from Rimsky-Korsakov.

Abbado is a fine Mussorgsky conductor, as admirers of his Boris Godunov (Sony, 5/94) and Khovanshchina (DG, 11/90) know. He gives the piece a formidable charge of energy here, a quality less hectic and exhilarating than Macal but strong, potent and dynamic. It is a powerful piece, especially in the original operatic scene rather than in the more appealing Rimsky-Korsakov orchestral guise which we know so well. He also gives a gentle, evocative performance of the Khovanshchina Prelude depicting dawn over the River Moscow, and accompanies his singers well in the two scenes from the opera, with Kotcherga a gloomy Shaklovity and Tarasova powerfully conjuring up the spirits of darkness in one of Mussorgsky�s greatest arias. There is also a lively performance of the dance, and a vivid one of the Intermezzo which Mussorgsky half-pretended was symphonic but was really a lively response to a scene he witnessed of some peasants blundering through the snow. His imagination was always pictorial and dramatic rather than symphonic. --Gramophone Magazine