Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition / Borodin: Polovtsian Dances

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Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839- 1881) Pictures at an ExhibitionPromenade1. GnomusPromenade2. The Old CastlePromenade3. The Tuilleries4. BydloPromenade5. Ballet of the Chickens in their Shells6. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle7. Limoges: The Market Place8. Catacombae -Cum mortuis in lingua mortua9. The Hut on Fowl's legs10. The Great Gate of Kiev Night on the Bare Mountain Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (1833 -1887) Polovtsian Dances (from Prince Igor) In the Steppes of Central Asia The later nineteenth century was the great age ofnationalism in Russia, a period in which the Russian language became a fitvehicle for the work of great novelists and poets and in which music soughtdevelopment through recourse to Russian traditions, sacred and secular. Therewas a curious ambivalence, apparent in music as elsewhere in the cultural andpolitical life of the country. On the one hand Western Europe seemed to offer amodel to follow, the course embraced by Anton Rubinstein and composers of a morecosmopolitan turn of mind: on the other hand Russia was seen as the saviour of Europe,with a messianic role opposed to the decadent West. The Five, the group of Russian nationalist composersunder the leadership ofBalakirev, nick-named by the polymath librarian Stasov"the Mighty Handful", involved themselves in the creation of a trulyRussian form of music. Balakirev himself deplored the foundation of what he sawas German-style conservatories, established in St. Petersburg and Moscow in the1860s by the Rubinstein brothers, but it was difficult to defend his followersagainst a charge of amateurism or dilettantism. While Balakirev himself hadmusical training and was a musician by profession, apart from a briefinterruption of his career, when religious melancholia induced him to work forthe state railways. Rimsky-Korsakov, who was to acquire considerable technicalskill, particularly in orchestration, was at first a naval officer; Cesar Cuiwas a professor of military fortification; Borodin was a research chemist, andMussorgsky, when he left the army, became a monstrously incompetent and unreliablecivil servant. Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was born in 1839, the son ofa land-owner. As a young officer he had musical ambitions, and without anytraining in composition tried his hand at an opera, as well as lessercompositions for the entertainment of his friends. It was a meeting with Cuiand with the composer Dargomizhsky that led him to a more influentialassociation with Balakirev and Stasov.After leaving the army, Mussorgsky held various positionsin the civil service.At his death in 1881, the result of epilepsy induced byalcoholism, he left a great deal unfinished, including the opera Khovanshchina,later completed by Rimsky-Korsakov, who took it upon himself to serve asmusical executor to both Mussorgsky and Borodin. His great Russian opera BorisGodunov was to be revised by Rimsky-Korsakov, who applied his technicalabilities to smoothing