Search - Mussorgsky, Pirogov, Kozlovsky :: Boris Godunov

A blood-and-guts Soviet Boris

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 02/02/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This recording from 1948 is a searing document of its post-war era. A reviewer of another edition of the same performance called it "a tremendous and ferocious mass exorcism." That is surely is, and at first the raw intensity from soloists, chorus, and orchestra come as a shock. You get the impression that the groaning heart of Russia is fuly exposed, without the slightest attempt to dampen the pain. I don't know if Mussorgsky intended our nerves to be jangled like this, but we know his work through the filter of Soviet history. Don't expect finesse form the rough-and-ready Bolshoi orchestra.



As for the sonics, they are mono, derived from a clean set of LPs that Opera d'Oro may have dulled by eliminating scratches and hiss. Every singer iis palced diectly in front of the micriphone, and there's shatter in the loudest, highest passages. none of these flaws can detract, however, from Golovanov's incendiry reading, which is at the farthest extreme from Abbado or Karajan with their European urbanity. In sum, a one-of-a-kind ecording at bargain price, losing the fifth star only because of its occasional crudeness and the dodgy sound."