(14CD) MUSSORGSKY EDITION

Mussorgsky, an "amateur" composer, was a great innovator of Russian music. He created an essential Russian musical language, in which folklore, Russian legends and fairytales played an important role. He wanted to free himself from Western classical and romantic traditions, and found a bold, raw, unpolished and passionate tone in his music, which speaks directly to the heart in its deep human emotions. This is the most complete set ever assembled of music by one of the most original composers in the Western canon, whose bold synthesis of native musical and dramatic traditions with an entirely personal grasp of harmony and timing made him influential way beyond the slender size of his eccentrically proportioned and editorially complex surviving output, which took on huge importance for figures as diverse as Olivier Messiaen, Igor Stravinsky and Harrison Birtwistle. The works which captured the public's imagination for their pictorial brilliance, such as Night on Bare Mountain and Pictures at an Exhibition, and in performances of authentically hard-headed brilliance, directed by Igor Markevitch. So too is his masterpiece, Boris Godunov, and in a legendary recording featuring perhaps the most renowned interpreter of the doomed and haunted eponymous tsar, Boris Christoff. But in many ways the songs lie at the heart of Mussorgsky's output, not least because they are our purest access to the composer's imagination, the larger-scale pieces sometimes needing and in any case receiving extensive intervention from later admirers and composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich, who wanted Mussorgsky's music to survive way beyond his drunken and chaotic life. Other information: - Mussorgsky left many of his works unfinished, or even destroyed them. Several of his works were finished by fellow composers, who also took care of them in "improving" or "cleaning" the sometimes too original (for their taste..) writing. - This set contains the three surviving operas: Boris Godunow, Khovantchina, Sorochinsky Fair, the complete songs, the piano music (of course the original version of Pictures of an Exhibition), orchestral music (the Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration of the Pictures). - Excellent, mostly Russian performances by great singers like Boris Christoff (Boris Godunow), Nikolai Gedda, Sergei Leiferkus (songs), conductor Igor Markevich, pianist Alexander Warenberg (magnificent Pictures) and others. - The largest survey of Mussorgsky's music on CD, the only Edition on the market! - A worthy successor to the Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin Editions. - Newly written liner notes in the booklet. - Booklet contains introduction to Mussorgsky and his music by Malcolm Macdonald.