Great Composers in Words and Music: Mussorgsky

Type	Album
Released	September 2023
Label	Naxos
Genre	Classical
Style	Baroque Classical Impressionist Romantic

Tracks

#	Title	Popular	Duration
1	Great Composers in Words and Music: Introduction
2	Pictures at an Exhibition: IV. Bydlo (excerpt)
3	Great Composers in Words and Music: Recalling his time spent in Berlin in the 1830s, the Russian literary critic Pavel Annenkov declared: "Every Russian newcomer was wryly asked whether he wished to stay in Berlin and…"
4	Kamarinskaya (excerpt)
5	Great Composers in Words and Music: If Glinka was the fountainhead of Russian music, his offspring - in a musical sense - included Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky…
6	Intermezzo in modo classico (1867 version for piano) (excerpt)
7	Great Composers in Words and Music: Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was born on 21 March 1839 into a wealthy, land-owning family in the provincial town of Karevo, situated in the Pskov district in the north-west of Russia…
8	Porte-enseigne Polka (Ensign-Polka) (excerpt)
9	Great Composers in Words and Music: After being commissioned an officer in the elite Preobrazhensky Regiment of the Imperial Guards, Mussorgsky met a group of musicians with whom he would be forever associated: "The Five"…
10	Scherzo in C-sharp minor (excerpt)
11	Great Composers in Words and Music: Another personal crisis appears to have occurred a couple of years later, in the summer of 1860, while Mussorgsky was staying at the rural estate of the Shilovskys, a St. Petersburg couple…
12	Pictures at an Exhibition: VIII. Catacombae (Sepulcrum romanum) (excerpt)
13	Great Composers in Words and Music: Another extract from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, this a movement titled Catacombs…
14	Seminarist (The Seminarist) (excerpt)
15	Great Composers in Words and Music: The following year, 1867, Mussorgsky finished an orchestral project that he seems to have had in mind for several years. This was the now-popular tone-poem Night on Bald Mountain, a work that…
16	St. John's Night on Bald Mountain, "A Night on the Bare Mountain" (original version) (excerpt)
17	Great Composers in Words and Music: That Mussorgsky never heard his tone-poem in performance is perhaps not surprising, given the work's immediate reception…
18	Zhenit'ba (The Marriage), Act I, Scene 1: Vot tak nachnyosh etak (Here is how you start)
19	Great Composers in Words and Music: Despite his bold proclamation of his compositional intentions in Marriage, Mussorgsky would go on to call the opera a mere preparatory exercise: "an experiment in dramatic music in prose"…
20	Boris Godunov, Prologue, Scene 1: Introduction (1869 version) (excerpt)
21	Great Composers in Words and Music: A final passage from Boris Godunov furnishes another example of a folk-inspired musical style…
22	Boris Godunov, Act IV, Scene 1: Lejtes', lejtes', slëzy gor'ki (Flow, bitter tears) (1869 version)
23	Great Composers in Words and Music: Here at the end of the opera, Mussorgsky paints a sorrowful picture…
24	Khovanshchina, Act I: Introduction (excerpt)
25	Great Composers in Words and Music: At the time Mussorgsky was working on Khovanshchina, Boris finally premiered at the Mariinsky…
26	Pictures at an Exhibition: Promenade
27	Great Composers in Words and Music: In between the seemingly happenstance occurrences of Mussorgsky's Promenade theme are movements that function as personal reminiscences: not the kind of dispassionate musical observations that…
28	Pictures at an Exhibition: II. Old Castle (excerpt)
29	Great Composers in Words and Music: Yet, as with Boris Godunov, Pictures at an Exhibition features contrasting styles…
30	Pictures at an Exhibition: V. Ballet of the Chickens in their Shells
31	Great Composers in Words and Music: 1874 was a busy year: besides working on the Pictures suite and Sunless songs, Mussorgsky started another musical project, one that - like the opera Khovanshchina - would also be left unfinished…
32	Pesni i plyaski smerti (Songs and Dances of Death): No. 3. Trepak
33	Great Composers in Words and Music: Mussorgsky started work on his Songs and Dances of Death in the first half of 1875, but the cycle was not finished until June 1877…
34	Pesnya Mefistofelya v pogrebke Auerbakha (Mephistopheles's Song in Auerbach's Cellar), "Song of the Flea" (excerpt)
35	Great Composers in Words and Music: Following Mussorgsky's dismissal from government service on 13 January 1880, the composer made further appearances as Leonova's accompanist…
36	Pictures at an Exhibition: X. The Great Gate at Kiev (excerpt)

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