Moussorgsky’s Boris, Berlioz’ Beatrice

The Russian psyche is such a complex commodity that frequently Russians fail to understand it. Writing in 1878, Tchaikovsky deplored Moussorgsky’s “lack of polish” and accused him of composing “just as it comes to him.” Though acknowledging genius, he could say “He has been too easily led away by the absurd theories of his set [the Kutchka, or “Five”] and the belief in his own genius. Besides which his nature is not of the finest quality, and he likes what is coarse, unpolished, and ugly.” Tchaikovsky, looking to a velvet Paris, preferred Rimsky-Korsakov.

Today, the purists object because Moussorgsky’s masterpiece, the opera Boris Godounoff, is heard in the resplendent reorchestration of Rimsky-Korsakov rather than in the massive, sometimes turgid, but always magnificent original. Rimsky-Korsakov was in some ways the Leopold Stokowski of his time, and he Westernized the intensely Russian harmonies of Moussorgsky. Yet he never made it “elegant”—and in his own way he clarified certain qualities in the overwhelmingly powerful opera which might have been lost in the composer’s own orchestration. This may be because Moussorgsky was lazy and impatient, never bothering to seek perfection of expression.

RT

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Ralph de Toledano

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The Russian psyche is such a complex commodity that frequently Russians fail to understand it. Writing in 1878, Tchaikovsky deplored Moussorgsky’s “lack of polish” and accused him of composing “just as it comes to him.” Though acknowledging genius, he could say “He has been too easily led away by the absurd theories of his set [the Kutchka, or “Five”] and the belief in his own genius. Besides which his nature is not of the finest quality, and he likes what is coarse, unpolished, and ugly.” Tchaikovsky, looking to a velvet Paris, preferred Rimsky-Korsakov.

Today, the purists object because Moussorgsky’s masterpiece, the opera Boris Godounoff, is heard in the resplendent reorchestration of Rimsky-Korsakov rather than in the massive, sometimes turgid, but always magnificent original. Rimsky-Korsakov was in some ways the Leopold Stokowski of his time, and he Westernized the intensely Russian harmonies of Moussorgsky. Yet he never made it “elegant”—and in his own way he clarified certain qualities in the overwhelmingly powerful opera which might have been lost in the composer’s own orchestration. This may be because Moussorgsky was lazy and impatient, never bothering to seek perfection of expression.