Rimsky-Korsakov: Mozart & Salieri

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Composer), Mikhail Glinka (Composer), Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (Composer), Yuli Turovsky (Conductor), I Musici de Montréal (Performer, Orchestra), I Musici de Montréal Choir (Orchestra), Vladimir Milman (Orchestra), Wladimir Bogatschow (Performer), Vladimir Bogachev (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: I Musici de Montréal, Wladimir Bogatschow, Vladimir Bogachev
• Orchestra: I Musici de Montréal, I Musici de Montréal Choir, Vladimir Milman
• Conductor: Yuli Turovsky
• Composer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Mikhail Glinka, Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka
• Audio CD (July 26, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Chandos
• ASIN: B000000ARE
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,893 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genius and Evil., August 29, 2010

By 

Anna Shlimovich (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rimsky-Korsakov: Mozart & Salieri (Audio CD)

This is an excellent recording of the opera who owes its fame more to the story it's based on than to the music itself. The pleasure of listening to it would be greatly multiplied if one would read before one of "The Little Tragedies" by the greatest Russian poet Pushkin - that is, "Mozart & Salieri". The story is perennially popular in Russia, with innumerable theater performances and films. Milos Forman, the director of the famous film `Amadeus", a person with Slav background, was definitely also very well familiar with the play.

It must be said that as knowing German would surely enhance Wagner's listener delight, knowing Russian would increase the joy of this piece - Pushkin's poetry is mesmerizing...

Musically it is rather a curiosity; it reminds of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in approach. It is a late piece of Rimsky-Korsakov, premiered in 1898, when influence of Tchaikovsky was immense. We can hardly hear any of "The Mighty Five" Russian nationalistic concepts in this opera. Wagner's fame and Western subject of this opera might have contributed to Rimsky's more western style here. Also, at that point of his career he was jealous of Tchaikovsky fame and was probably already aware of his own limitations. It seems to me that he wished to illustrate musically the great drama of this Little Tragedy "Mozart and Salieri" and to explore its dramatic views on relationship of hard work and genius; perhaps he imagined himself as a hard-working Salieri whose fame was being overshadowed by other, more gifted, albeit more dissolute composers, of which sort Tchaikovsky and Wagner would provide an ample material.

The opera is short - only 44 minutes; there are marvelous scenes.

In the Scene One an old blind violinist in a trattoria plays fragments from "Batti, batti, o bel Masetto"; he plays it badly, as a caricature on the original; Mozart laughs this causes Salieri to erupt in an art purist rage with the most famous words - see the whole scene:

(The old man plays "Batti, batti, o bel Masetto" from Don Giovanni; Mozart
roars with laughter.)

Salieri
And you can laugh?

Mozart
Ah, come,
Salieri, aren't you laughing?

Salieri
No, I'm not!
How can I laugh when some inferior dauber
Stains in my view the great Raphael's Madonna;
How can I laugh when some repellent mummer
With tasteless parodies dishonors Alighieri.
Begone, old man!

Then in Scene Two the beginning of Requiem (luckily Rimsky seemed to use the beginning to be sure of Mozart's authorship :)) and then Pushkin and Rimsky refer to some tune by Salieri that we do not know - it is a piece from Salieri's opera "Tarare" based on Beaumarchais play. It is truly regrettable that no recording of this opera exists, considering that it must have been the same overwhelming success as Don Giovanni, since it was so casually mentioned, obviously a hint understood by the contemporaries of Pushkin and Rimsky, those who knew that opera well. Today we can only read that: "Opera "Tarare" was intended to be the nec plus ultra of reform opera, a completely new synthesis of poetry and music that was an 18th century anticipation of the ideals of Richard Wagner."

In is in this scene when the great dialog is taking place:

Mozart
Yes! I remember, you were boon companions
With Beaumarchais; you wrote "Tarare" for him --
A glorious thing. It has one melody...
I keep on singing it when I feel happy...
La la la la... Ah, is it right, Salieri,
That Beaumarchais could really poison someone?

Salieri
I doubt he did: too laughable a fellow
For such a serious craft.

Mozart
He was a genius,
Like you and me. While genius and evildoing
Are incompatibles. Is that not right?

Salieri
You think so?
(Throws the poison into Mozart's glass.)
Well, now drink.

Genius and Evil are incompatible - this immortal expression of Pushkin will forever be a subject of controversy, too, pointing as well to the poet's own fate and short life.

The opera finishes with Salieri acquitting himself, saying that the builder of Vatican, Michelangelo Buonarotti, was also a murderer (this refers to the widespread belief of that epoch that Michelangelo would use corpses to study anatomy for his art - which can still be true). And therefore the Mozart-Salieri dispute goes on unresolved.

The truth of Mozart's poisoning is, however, unknown - it is doubtful that Salieri poisoned Mozart, according to many scholars. The well-known fact is that Mozart did not enjoy good health in his entire life, and this probably reflected in his music, which is quite melancholic behind often a cheerful façade. While Salieri had a long life, which was obviously due to a sturdy health, and perhaps this is another reason for his music being lighter, easier, funnier, simpler, closer to an average listener, and maybe this is why he was more popular in his day. It must be too that he was a great diplomat, like Haydn, while Mozart certainly was not.

And in addition, Pushkin in his play refers to Gluck with Iphigenie, Piccini, and Haydn; one can only be amazed by the erudition of Pushkin and the success of Gluck, who was Salieri's patron, and also a preferred composer of Marie-Antoinette, who chose Gluck over Mozart. How fashion changes; and who knows what will be in vogue 200 years from now? Genius or Evil?

The opera is sung by two great voices - Salieri by bass Nikita Storojev, who is fantastic in this role. His predecessor at the premier in Moscow on 7 December 1898 was the great bass Fyodor Chaliapin.

Mozart is sung by tenor lirico-spinto Vladimir Bogachev, a former star of Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, and since 1989 engaged into an international career with major opera houses throughout the world.

Recommended to all interested in Mozart, Salieri and Russian music and literature.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good album of Rimsky's "Amadeus" opera plus relatively unfamiliar songs of Glinka and of Rimsky, January 13, 2012

By 

G.C. (St. Louis, MO, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rimsky-Korsakov: Mozart & Salieri (Audio CD)

Long before Peter Shaffer, Alexander Pushkin penned his "little tragedy" that postulated the envy of Antonio Salieri at the talent of Wolfgang Amade Mozart, to the point where Pushkin devised a fictional plot whereby Salieri poisoned Mozart. This poisoning has no basis in fact, just for the record, the imaginations of Pushkin and Shaffer aside. The conflation of the two fictional treatments of this "urban legend" is emphasized on this album, with a cover still from the 1984 film of "Amadeus".

Rimsky-Korsakov's opera is quite declamatory in nature, without any obvious "hit arias", even though the soliloquies in the opera come from Salieri and not Mozart, with Salieri reflecting on the nature of his jealousy and his crime. The performance here with Vladimir Bogachov as Mozart and Nikita Storojev as Salieri, backed by I Musici de Montreal, is a good one. The first solo instrumental credit goes to Jacques Proulx, who plays the deliberately bad violin solo quote from "Don Giovanni". One wonders if there was an in-joke behind the choice of Proulx to deliver the solo, since Proulx is listed as a member of the viola section of I Musici de Montreal. The other instrumental cameo is by none other than Marc-Andre Hamelin, who plays the piano not only in track 11, an excerpt from Mozart's Requiem, but apparently also in track 5, although Hamelin is uncredited in track 5.

This CD also includes 2 art songs by Rimsky-Korsakov, and 10 art songs by Mikhail Glinka, all in chamber orchestrations by Vladimir Milman. Bogachov sings the two Rimsky art songs and the first 4 of the Glinka songs in the sequence on the CD, while Storojev sings the last 6 Glinka settings. Both do well. The detriment, for me, is the orchestrations themselves, as they add nothing to the music that a solo piano wouldn't already have featured.