Customer Reviews

Mussorgsky: Integrale des Melodies [Complete Songs]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This box set earns its 5 stars on three counts. The first, the obvious one, that Boris Christoff (so closely identified with his namesake Godunov) is the perfect Mussorgsky bass. The second is that these songs are all excellent, not many 'complete' song collections can be so uniformly good. The third, and this is what makes it 5 stars not 4, is that EMI have really taken the libretto seriously - 144 pages with full cyrillic texts (not just roman alphabet transcriptions) plus translations in English, French and German. Timings: 57'14 66'51 67'57

Boris Christoff's rendering of the Mussorgsky songs is a real treasure. Mussorgsky's songs are gripping, and Christoff's singing fine. One does wish, however, that the reissue on CD's included the words. I don't know Russian, and feel slightly short-changed by the lack. And putting the accompanists in a footnote at the bottom of the last page, referencing their performances only by track number, is a dis-service to them. Their solid musicianship is a critical part of the perfomances. If you can get a copy, I'd certainly say get it if classical song has any appeal whatsoever, but be prepared for sub-par documentation.

This box set is doubtless one of the greatest glories of the gramophone. The legendary opera artist Boris Christoff, supreme Philip II and Boris Godunov, was the first to record the complete songs of Modest Mussorgsky and today is really hard to imagine what a revolution that must have been in the late 1950s when this music was far less popular than it is today (indeed, even today it is not at all popular). I venture to claim that here Boris Christoff reveals more fully the tremendous dimensions of his voice than in any opera role - from the most thunderous fortissimos to the softest pianissimos one can imagine; from the melting tenderness of "Night" and "Where art thou, little Star?" through the fantastic transformation of the voice in "Nursery" until the desolation and total depression of "Sunless" and "Song and Dances of Death", probably the greatest masterpieces Mussorgsky ever composed in this genre. Personally I have no problem with the fact, which obviously irritates some people, that Boris Christoff chose the orchestrations of Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov and not the original piano accompaniment for the latter. The orchestra is not particularly well recorded but with such a voice who cares about that? The piano accompaniment of Alexander Labinsky is beyond reproach.

EMI has done a wonderful job the only drawback of which is the omission of the notes written personally by Boris Christoff which accompanied the original LP release in the 50s. But a good compensation is that, as the previous reviewer noted very accurately, all lyrics are here and not in some ugly transliterations but in cyrilic for the original Russian that all these masterpieces were written for. That's something extremely rare and it is a very pleasant surprise that EMI took the trouble to do it; that is also the greatest (and here it is great indeed) flaw of the other legendary box set of Boris Christoff with Russian songs (5 CDs with Glinka, Borodine, Cui, Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov as well as some traditional songs released by EMI in 1992) which lacks any lirycs whatsoever. The sound of this one is excellent for the age of recording. It may not be so clear and crisp as in the later remastering from the Great Recordings of 20th Century series (only one CD with the most famous of these songs) but it is deeper and more sonorous.

For all fans of Boris Christoff this box set is absolutely obligatory of course, that goes without saying. I think that all lovers of the Russian song, and the art of singing in general, are not likely to be disappointed by Boris' rich voice and instinctive insight into the character of each single song, either.

P.S. I have just seen the above review in which the reviewer complains about lack of documentation. Most probably he refers to the re-issue of the box set by Andromeda. This I haven't seen, but as far as I know it contains exactly the same recordings (newly remastered?); obviously it lacks completely the fine documentation of the EMI set. So be careful what you're buying. Andromeda is the best choice to save quite a bit of money of course, but considering the importance of the texts and the lavish presentation of the original set, it is strongly recommended to spend much more money, but to get the real thing. It is worth it. If you are real fan of Boris and Mussorgsky, of course.