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5.0 out of 5 stars
"Chants et danses de la mort", April 30, 2010
This review is from: Mussorgsky, Rimsky Korsakov, Tchaikovsky: Songs and Opera Arias (Audio CD)
Galina Vishnevskaya has made many historic recordings, including "War Requiem," "Boris Godunov," "War and Peace," "Tosca," "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk," "Eugene Onegin," "Pique-dame," and "The Poet's Echo." But this 1976 recording of Mussorgsky's "Songs and Dances of Death" just may be her greatest effort in the recording studio. In fact, she and the late Mstislav Rostropovich had recorded the original piano version in 1961, but here they are heard in Dimitri Shostakovich's masterful orchestration of the cycle.
Vishnevskaya's singing is terrifying. Her evocation of Death is without pity, indeed without any vocal "beauty," in the usual sense of the term. It seems, rather, a struggle before the forces of Life and Death, so vivid is she. Once heard, it is never to be forgotten!
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