Khovanshchina

Libretto by Modest Mussorgsky (R), Enns Fried (G)

A completion and orchestration of Musorgsky’s opera of 1886 for a filmed performance.  In five acts.

Musorgsky’s unfinished historical epic about the Khovansky Affair (the savage political struggle in late 17th century Russia that ushered in the rule of the Emperor Peter the Great) is a deeply frustrating affair. It contains some of Musorgsky’s most beautiful and inspired music, but the composer never managed to finish it and orchestrated only a few small fragments. It is therefore unperformable as it stands.

Rimsky-Korsakov made a long famous performing version, in which he cut and reordered the material to his own tastes. Shostakovich’s knowledge of Musorgsky’s music was unparallelled among modern musicians (indeed he knew much of it by heart). By returning to the composer’s original sketches as edited by Pavel Lamm, he was able to create a modern version that gives us a quite different insight from Rinsky’s into what the opera might have been like had Musorgsky managed to complete it. Shostakovich’s version is tougher, bleaker and far closer to Musorgsky’s own orchestral style than Rimsky’s beautiful but lush and ornate approach.

Shostakovich’s version, although written for a film-version of the opera, has nowadays become the standard text for performance of this piece in the world’s opera-houses.

Note by Gerard McBurney