Your Six Favourite Orchestrations

[CallMePaul]

I may be less than 100% popular for saying this, but I regard Musorgsky (NB: only one 's' in the Russian spelling!) as Russia's greatest 19th Century composer. I am sure that he knew what he was doing and I react strongly to "improvements" of his work by the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov. The original Night on a Bare Mountain is far more skilfully orchestrated than Rimsky-K's edition yet is less frequently performed.
As for Pictures from an Exhibition (why oh why do people insist on mistranslating the title), Ravel's orchestration is at best misguided and at worst malicious damage. Take the various Promenades which were meant to portray the composer's progress around the gallery. Musorgsky had a pronounced limp and the bright horns that open Ravel's version are completely unsuitable. Bydlo completely bowdlerises Musorgsky's intentions, and I could quote other examples. Russian orchestratioins such as those of Tushmalev, Fey and Ashkenazy come much closer to the composer's thoughts than do Ravel (or for that matter Stokowski).
I am nnot impressed by any of the orchestrations of Musorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. Please can a fine slavic bass or baritone give us a recording of the original, and treat them in a manner akin to Lieder (particularly late Schumann or wolf) rather than in a quasi-operatic manner a la Boris Christoff.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not strictly, I think you will find. He took what was remained of Debussy's instrumentation of the recited Chansons de Bilitis and reconstructed the celesta part, which had not survived. Arthur Hoérée also made a separate reconstruction of the celesta part.

My introduction to the work was via a CBS LP with Vera Zorina as the reciter. Would that that recording might appear on CD, or as a decent download. Still, I do have a couple of other recordings of the work.

Oh, and re. orchestration, just about everything Stravinsky eventually scored for orchestral forces.

Thanks for putting me right on this, Bryn - it's been many years...

[vinteuil]

Musorgsky (NB: only one 's' in the Russian spelling!)

.. yes, but the Russian spelling is Мусоргский....

.



In English, it's Mussorgsky.

[ wiki has a long para on the tribulations of his nomenclature, ending :

"The Western convention of doubling the first 's', which is not observed in scholarly literature (e.g. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians), likely arose because in many Western European languages a single intervocalic 's' often becomes voiced to 'z' (e.g., 'music'), unlike Slavic languages where it remains unvoiced. Doubling the consonant thus reinforces its voiceless sibilant 's' sound." ]

[CallMePaul]

[QUOTE=vinteuil;398658]..

In English, it's Mussorgsky.

This spelling is actually accurate for German speakers. In German, "ss" is considered a single letter (my English keyboard does not allow me to reproduce the German form). Most recent English publications including my Oxford biography spell his name with a single 's'.

[Ferretfancy]

I may be less than 100% popular for saying this, but I regard Musorgsky (NB: only one 's' in the Russian spelling!) as Russia's greatest 19th Century composer. I am sure that he knew what he was doing and I react strongly to "improvements" of his work by the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov. The original Night on a Bare Mountain is far more skilfully orchestrated than Rimsky-K's edition yet is less frequently performed.
As for Pictures from an Exhibition (why oh why do people insist on mistranslating the title), Ravel's orchestration is at best misguided and at worst malicious damage. Take the various Promenades which were meant to portray the composer's progress around the gallery. Musorgsky had a pronounced limp and the bright horns that open Ravel's version are completely unsuitable. Bydlo completely bowdlerises Musorgsky's intentions, and I could quote other examples. Russian orchestratioins such as those of Tushmalev, Fey and Ashkenazy come much closer to the composer's thoughts than do Ravel (or for that matter Stokowski).
I am nnot impressed by any of the orchestrations of Musorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. Please can a fine slavic bass or baritone give us a recording of the original, and treat them in a manner akin to Lieder (particularly late Schumann or wolf) rather than in a quasi-operatic manner a la Boris Christoff.

I'm sure you are correct, it's just that I think a bit of fun now and again is not such a bad thing, and Stokey delivers it.

[Serial_Apologist]

I may be less than 100% popular for saying this, but I regard Musorgsky (NB: only one 's' in the Russian spelling!) as Russia's greatest 19th Century composer. I am sure that he knew what he was doing and I react strongly to "improvements" of his work by the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov. The original Night on a Bare Mountain is far more skilfully orchestrated than Rimsky-K's edition yet is less frequently performed.

The Rimsky version holds together much better as composition (and btw which came first, Rimsky's peaceful ending or Saint-Saens's "Danse Macabre"?) but the original is so much more daring!

As for Pictures from an Exhibition (why oh why do people insist on mistranslating the title), Ravel's orchestration is at best misguided and at worst malicious damage. Take the various Promenades which were meant to portray the composer's progress around the gallery. Musorgsky had a pronounced limp and the bright horns that open Ravel's version are completely unsuitable. Bydlo completely bowdlerises Musorgsky's intentions, and I could quote other examples. Russian orchestratioins such as those of Tushmalev, Fey and Ashkenazy come much closer to the composer's thoughts than do Ravel (or for that matter Stokowski).

Ah but have you heard the re-mastered, original Koussevitzky/Boston SO version of 1930, when Ravel was present? Might change your pov.

[Bryn]

Thanks for putting me right on this, Bryn - it's been many years...

Here's a bit more info:

http://catalogue.bnf.fr/servlet/biblio?idNoeud=1&ID=42939385&SN1=0&SN2=0&host=catalogue

I was not sure of the chronology, but it appears the effective reduction for piano, 6 Épigraphes antiques, followed a decade and an half after the original accompaniment for the Louys poems. I got to know the recited Chansons de Bilitis long before ever hearing the 3 songs of that title.

[Serial_Apologist]

Here's a bit more info:

http://catalogue.bnf.fr/servlet/biblio?idNoeud=1&ID=42939385&SN1=0&SN2=0&host=catalogue

I was not sure of the chronology, but it appears the effective reduction for piano, 6 Épigraphes antiques, followed a decade and an half after the original accompaniment for the Louys poems. I got to know the recited Chansons de Bilitis long before ever hearing the 3 songs of that title.

Fascinating stuff!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I may be less than 100% popular for saying this, but I regard Musorgsky (NB: only one 's' in the Russian spelling!) as Russia's greatest 19th Century composer.

I am sure that he knew what he was doing and I react strongly to "improvements" of his work by the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov. The original Night on a Bare Mountain is far more skilfully orchestrated than Rimsky-K's edition yet is less frequently performed.

As for Pictures from an Exhibition (why oh why do people insist on mistranslating the title), Ravel's orchestration is at best misguided and at worst malicious damage.

... I have been saying this for years on this Forum and the Beeb Messageboards before it.

Take the various Promenades which were meant to portray the composer's progress around the gallery. Musorgsky had a pronounced limp and the bright horns that open Ravel's version are completely unsuitable. Bydlo completely bowdlerises Musorgsky's intentions, and I could quote other examples. Russian orchestratioins such as those of Tushmalev, Fey and Ashkenazy come much closer to the composer's thoughts than do Ravel (or for that matter Stokowski).

I didn't know about the limp - makes sense when you hear the Piano original. Don't know the Tushmalev or Fey versions, but is there any need to orchestrate this towering work of 19th Century writing for Piano, when Musorgsky's piano writing itself is so well "orchestrated"?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I didn't know about the limp - makes sense when you hear the Piano original. Don't know the Tushmalev or Fey versions, but is there any need to orchestrate this towering work of 19th Century writing for Piano, when Musorgsky's piano writing itself is so well "orchestrated"?

Whatever the merits of the piano vs. orchestral versions, surely we should celebrate the latter bringing the work to the world's attention in a way the original may not have done.

[Dave2002]

As for Pictures from an Exhibition (why oh why do people insist on mistranslating the title), ....

Possibly because most people don't know Russian, and perhaps also there might be more than one possible translation.

Looking at what appears to be an early score - http://conquest.imslp.info/files/img...7012668630.pdf one finds the pieces are called КАРТИНКИ СЪ ВЫСТАВКИ - or in French Tableaux d'une exposition. I haven't found a manuscript to see what was written originally.

Since we are unable to ask either Mussorgsky or Rimsky Korsakov or others who might have had an interest in such works at the time of their composition how they would have translated the Russian or French into English - they might not have known English - it is probably impossible to tell what was intended. The following could all arguably be considered reasonable translations from the Russian or French:

1. Pictures at an exhibition
2. Pictures of an exhibition
3. Exhibition pictures
4. Pictures from an exhibition

The most common representations are 1 and 4. Looking at CDs which are available, I note that there are CDs of Abbado's version on DG, and Horowitz's version on RCA which both use 1.

Translation is not an exact science, and sometimes becomes very tricky. Many of the translations of the words from songs and poems might be considered "wrong", as the translator has to take into account more than a simple transformation from each word to the target language, and it's not even always one to one. Here, at least, the title is fairly simple though note that even in this case the translation from Russian to English is not 1-1.

Your other concern about the double "ss" in Mussorgsky arises presumably because the Russian "s" (actually a 'c') is pronounced like a "ss" in English, and that is therefore how it is usually represented. This kind of representation also seems to explain why some composer's names, such as Rachmaninov and Prokofiev are also frequently anglicised as Rachmaninoff and Prokofieff, and the representations seem to change over time - perhaps it's a fashion thing. Actually you might like like to look at the way Mussorgsky's name is spelled in the score I linked to - in English it might look something like - Mogecma Mycop*cka*o - the * does not correspond to any obvious English letter - and consider how you might pronounce that!

We of course even have the following situation in the UK, where the Welsh name "Ifor" is, I believe, pronounced as "Ivor" - or perhaps not quite that .... Ask Bryn Terfel.

Anglicisation of some words gets worse from some languages, such as Chinese, which doesn't even have anything remotely like Roman letters, so due to changes in the way this has been done over years names such as Chang Zhang etc. may all refer to the same person, but radio announcers in the UK will almost certainly pronounce the anglicised forms of these very differently. Most English speakers will not recognise the name of one of the greatest tennis players Bjorn Borg as it is pronounced in Swedish - let's ignore the fact that in English we don't have an exact equivalent for the letter 'ö' in Björn Borg in the Swedish spelling.

[Sir Velo]

Most English speakers will not recognise the name of one of the greatest tennis players Bjorn Borg as it is pronounced in Swedish - let's ignore the fact that in English we don't have an exact equivalent for the letter 'ö' in Björn Borg in the Swedish spelling.

Indeed, and the city we call Gothenburg is actually pronounced something like Yotaburg by the natives.

[kea]

Indeed, and the city we call Gothenburg is actually pronounced something like Yotaburg by the natives.

'Yötabury' is closer to it I think

[Sir Velo]

Whatever the merits of the piano vs. orchestral versions, surely we should celebrate the latter bringing the work to the world's attention in a way the original may not have done.

Quite. It's a masterly piece of orchestration in its own right and should be celebrated as that, even if it is not authentically Russian.

[Sir Velo]

'Yötabury' is closer to it I think

This thread is rapidly turning into Pedant's Corner.