Modest Mussorgsky - Stokowski's Arrangements (Matthias Bamert)

Information

Composer: Modest Mussorgsky

• (01) A Night on the Bare Mountain (arr. Stokowski)
• (02-07) Boris Godunov: Symphonic Synthesis (arr. Stokowski):
• (08) Entr'acte to Act IV of Khovanshchina (arr. Stokowski)
• (09-20) Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Stokowski)

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Matthias Bamert, conductor

Date: 1995
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209445

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Review

In his excellent biography of Stokowski (Dodd and Mead: 1982) Oliver Daniel talks in detail of doubts expressed by various musicians that Stokowski’s orchestral transcriptions were entirely his own work. Certainly in the earlier days Lucien Cailliet (a clarinet player in the Philadelphia Orchestra) had a considerable hand in the Bach scores and he very likely did a good deal of the physical work of score-writing. Yet Cailliet himself stated that the conductor and he discussed each piece in detail first, and it is known that Stokowski was always amending the instrumentation in the course of performances. In any case, Cailliet’s association with the conductor ended in 1938 and while he might have contributed to the skilfully tailored 24-minute Boris Godunov synthesis (according to Daniel, dating from November 1936), the Pictures at an Exhibition (1939) was all Stokowski’s own and Night on Bald Mountain (the correct title, and nearer the original Russian meaning) was scored for Disney in 1940.

Anyone who has seen Fantasia finds the imagery in this last piece unforgettable and the powerfully plangent orchestration (especially the use of percussive effects) is in many respects nearer to Mussorgsky’s St John’s Night on the Bare Mountain than the Rimsky version. It sounds really superb here, as indeed does the Pictures – far preferable to the bloated Phase 4 sound of Stokowski’s own earlier recordings for Decca. The sombre power of the operatic synthesis, with its Kremlin bells and chanting monks and the haunted portrait of Boris himself, emerges with distinction. The Entr’acte from Khovanshchina is even finer, one of Stokowski’s most effective transcriptions, rich in sonority and played very movingly under Matthias Bamert.

I like the vividness of Stokowski’s Pictures too, particularly the way in which the orchestration is varied – the unison horns sing out splendidly near the climax of “Bydlo”, while to feature a cor anglais for the main theme in “The old castle” is quite as telling as Ravel’s saxophone, perhaps more so. Stokowski uses the violins rather more than Ravel, as instanced by the opening “Promenade”. The one moment when Ravel’s scoring is truly inspired is the interchange between Goldenburg and Schmuyle; Stokowski has the woodwind echo the solo trumpet and the effect, mockingly piquant though it is, becomes less bleatingly obsequious than Ravel’s version. Not surprisingly the “Catacombes” sequence makes a sumptuously weighty impact and “Baba-jaga” is searingly grotesque and bizarrely full of imaginative orchestral comments. Two numbers are omitted: “Tuileries” and “Limoges”, as Stokowski considered them “too French” and “not Mussorgskian”. (Edward Johnson’s authoritative notes suggest that the conductor did not have access to the original piano score, but if not, what did he use to make his transcription?) “The Great Gate of Kiev”, scored for massive forces, including bells and organ, makes a huge final apotheosis – how Stokowski must have revelled in its grand climax.

-- Ivan March, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.classical-music.com/review/mussorgsky-16
http://www.classicalcdreview.com/muss.html
https://www.amazon.com/Stokowskis-Mussorgsky-Exhibition-Khovanschina-Symphonic/dp/B000000AYU

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Modest Mussorgsky (21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as The Five. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period, striving to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalist themes. For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers, but some of the original scores are now also available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Mussorgsky

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Leopold Stokowski (18 April 1882 – 13 September 1977) was a British conductor of Polish and Irish descent. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th Century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and for appearing in the film Fantasia. He was especially noted for his free-hand conducting style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from the orchestras he directed. Stokowski made his official conducting debut in 1909 and continued making recordings until June 1977, a few months before his death at the age of 95.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Stokowski

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Matthias Bamert (born July 5, 1942 in Ersigen, Canton of Bern) is a Swiss composer and conductor. Bamert studied music in Switzerland, in Darmstadt and in Paris, with Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He was principal oboist with the Salzburg Mozart Orchestra between 1965-1969, then switched to conducting. Bamert's conducting career began in North America as an apprentice to George Szell and later as Assistant Conductor to Leopold Stokowski, and Resident Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel. He made over 60 recordings, most of them for Chandos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Bamert

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