Modest Mussorgsky: Russian Songs, Pictures at an Exhibition - Igor Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms (Remastered) Igor Markevitch, Berliner Philharmoniker, Russian Symphony Orchestra, Galina Vishnevskaya

• Modest Mussorgsky (1839 - 1881): Russian Songs:
• 1 Mussorgsky: Russian Songs: Cradle Song 04:35
• 2 Mussorgsky: Russian Songs: Magpie Whitesides 01:53
• 3 Mussorgsky: Russian Songs: Night 03:49
• 4 Mussorgsky: Russian Songs: Where Are You, Dear Star? 04:12
• 5 Mussorgsky: Russian Songs: Scallywag 01:48
• 6 Mussorgsky: Russian Songs: The Dniepr 04:36
• Modest Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition:
• 7 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: Promenade I 01:27
• 8 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: I. Gnomus 02:28
• 9 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: Promenade II 00:55
• 10 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: II. Il Vecchio castello 03:24
• 11 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: Promenade III 00:26
• 12 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: III. Tuileries 01:14
• 13 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: IV. Bydlo 02:56
• 14 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: Promenade IV 00:39
• 15 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: V. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks 01:14
• 16 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: VI. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle 02:36
• 17 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: VII. Limoges 01:21
• 18 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: VIII. Catacombs 01:54
• 19 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: Cum mortuis in lingua mortua 01:50
• 20 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: IV. The Hut on Fowl's legs 03:24
• 21 Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition: The Great Gate of Kiev 05:03
• Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971): Symphony of Psalms:
• 22 Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms: I. Exaudit orationem meam, Domine 03:12
• 23 Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms: II. Expectans expectavi Dominum 04:55
• 24 Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms: III. Alleluia, Laudate Dominum 11:23
• Total Runtime 01:11:14

Info for Modest Mussorgsky: Russian Songs, Pictures at an Exhibition - Igor Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms (Remastered)

In Moscow, Markevitch accompanies Galina Vishnevskaya at her peak, then makes sacred the Symphony of Psalms of a Stravinsky nevertheless banished for 'cosmopolitism'. This, after having obtained from the Berlin Philharmonic painting as rich as Ravel's forthright clarity in the famous Pictures at an Exhibition, the non-operatic masterpiece of Mussorgsky, the most original and popular of the Russian Five of the Belle Epoque. An extraordinary series of events henceforth preserved in their truth.

Igor Markevitch leads the Berlin Philharmonic in Moscow in February 1953: 'Pictures at an Exhibition' in the Ravel orchestration. In June 1960 he returned in the second of these two historic concerts, remastered to perfection, with Stravinsky's 'Symphony of Psalms' performed by the Russian State Academic Choir.

The great Galina Vishnevskaya was at her absolute peak in June 1962, giving us six Russian songs in arrangements by Igor Markevitch himself.

Galina Vishnevskaia, soprano
Russian State Academic Choir
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Russian Symphony Orchestra
Igor Markevitch, conductor

Digitally remastered

Galina Vishnevskaya
The daughter of an army officer and a Polish gypsy, Vishnevskaya was brought up in poverty by her grandmother after her father, an alcoholic, tried to kill her mother with an axe. When she was ten she was given a record of music from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin which completely captivated her: ‘I was in a fever for days’, she later recalled. As a child she displayed vocal talent, studying at the Rimsky- Korsakov School of Music and then privately with Vera Nikolayevna.

Following the lifting of the siege of Leningrad in 1944 Vishnevskaya auditioned successfully for the Leningrad District Operetta Theatre and was part of a troupe that entertained Russian troops. Around this time she was married briefly to a young alcoholic sailor, Georgi Vishnevsky, whose name she took professionally and by whom she had a child who died shortly after birth; she later married the founder of the Leningrad Operetta Theatre, Mark Rubin. In 1950 she took the part of Polenka in the operetta Kholopka by Strelnikov and after singing with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, decided upon an operatic career.

In 1951 Vishnevskaya began to study opera with the distinguished teacher Vera Garina but her career was endangered when she contracted tuberculosis. She survived this by refusing the traditional treatment of collapsing a lung (with the consequence of being unable to sing) and by securing antibiotics on the black market through mortgaging her future earnings. In 1952 she won a singing competition organised by Moscow’s Bolshoi Opera, which secured for her a place with this company. Her first major role at the Bolshoi was Tatyana / Eugene Onegin in October 1953: her animated interpretation was enormously successful and this remained a signature role throughout her career.

At the Bolshoi Vishnevskaya soon demonstrated her worth: ‘…she could perform any part with top-class professionalism’, recalled the producer Boris Pokrovsky. Her major roles included Leonore / Fidelio, Marguerite / Faust, Lisa / The Queen of Spades, Kupava / The Snow Maiden, Marfa / The Tsar’s Bride (both by Rimsky-Korsakov), the title role in Rachmaninov’s Francesca da Rimini, Lady Macbeth / Macbeth, Violetta / La traviata, Alice Ford / Falstaff, Desdemona / Otello and the title parts in Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (revised as Katarina Izmailova). Among the first performances at the Bolshoi in which she participated were Shebalin’s The Taming of the Shrew (1957), Prokofiev’s War and Peace (Natasha, 1959), Muradeli’s October (Marina, 1964) and Prokofiev’s Semyon Kotko (Sofiya, 1970).

Another of Vishnevskaya’s finest roles was the title part in Aida. She first performed this in Sarajevo in 1960, going on to make her debut in the same part at the Metropolitan Opera in 1961 (followed by a single Butterfly) and later at the Royal Opera House, London. The British composer Benjamin Britten wrote the soprano part in his War Requiem for her, possibly after he had heard her sing in 1961. The Soviet authorities prevented her from participating in the first performance at Coventry Cathedral in 1962, but she later recorded the work with Britten conducting in 1963. For her debut at La Scala, Milan, in 1964 she sang Liù / Turandot opposite Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli.

While on tour in Czechoslovakia in 1955 Vishnevskaya had met the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, whom she swiftly married, one reason being to avoid the advances of the Soviet politician Bulganin. Many years later, partly from outrage at the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, she and her husband began to associate with Soviet dissidents, for instance allowing the author Alexander Solzhenitsyn to write in their country house between 1969 and 1973. Although Vishnevskaya was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1971, she and Rostropovich rapidly became ‘non-persons’ in Soviet Russia. Shortly after Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion in 1974 she and her family (she had two daughters by Rostropovich) were allowed to leave the Soviet Union; their citizenships were revoked in 1978. During this period they lived in America and later in France and England. In one of the last acts of the Soviet Union, in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev restored the couple’s citizenship and they returned to Russia; the survival of Boris Yeltsin during the attempted coup of 1991 was certainly assisted by Rostropovich’s public presence beside him.

Having given her farewell performance in Paris in 1982 as Tatyana, Vishnevskaya spent the latter part of her life in good works, establishing the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation to support children, founding an opera school in Moscow, and a charity to assist retired members of the Bolshoi Opera. She played the empress Catherine the Great in the film Behind the Mirror (1994) and a babushka in the film Alexandra (2007).

Unquestionably the finest dramatic soprano to come out of the Soviet Union in the post-war period, Vishnevskaya had a voice that was secure throughout the whole soprano range, with a warm and attractive vocal timbre. She was a forceful presence on stage, where her slim figure and natural good looks commanded all eyes as well as ears. Her wonderful account of Tatyana in the 1956 recording of Eugene Onegin by the Bolshoi Opera remains a benchmark interpretation.

Booklet for Modest Mussorgsky: Russian Songs, Pictures at an Exhibition - Igor Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms (Remastered)