Modest mussorgsky - pictures at an exhibition
Why did mussorgsky write pictures at an exhibition?!
What did the composer maurice ravel do with mussorgsky’s music?
Vladimir Galouzine as Vasily Golitsyn and Anatoli Kotscherga as Ivan Khovansky in Mussorgsky’s “Khovananshchina.” Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
In the department of doom and gloom, Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina takes the top prize.
Set in Moscow in the years before Peter the Great ascended the throne, it paints a frighteningly pessimistic picture of a Russia of illiterate strongmen, irresponsible aristocrats and impotent religious leaders. The score, left unfinished at the composer’s death by alcohol poisoning, is fittingly dark, dominated by bass voices and a choir that moves back and forth from desperate prayer to orgies of drink and violence.
Any glimmer of hope needs to be provided by the viewer who may, if inclined towards a melioristic view of history, see the plot as justification for Tsar Peter’s ruthless modernization efforts, which determined the country’s character to this day.
Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovitch, who each fashioned a performance edition of the sc