CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The MET Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 3:00 PM

The MET Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, Conductor
René Pape, Bass

MUSSORGSKY St. John's Night on Bald Mountain
MUSSORGSKY Songs and Dances of Death
MUSSORGSKY Monologue of Boris from Act II of Boris Godunov
MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Ravel)

Perspectives: Valery Gergiev

Perspectives concerts are made possible, in part, by a generous grant from The Alice Tully Foundation.

Program Notes:

By David Hamilton

MODEST MUSSORGSKY
Born March 21, 1839, in Karevo, in the Pskov district of Russia; died March 28, 1881, in St. Petersburg.

Few significant composers have left behind a more problematic legacy than Mussorgsky. Son of a well-to-do land-owner, he showed early signs of musical talent and received piano lessons from his mother. At the St. Petersburg Cadet School, he sang in the choir and continued piano study, but his early essays in composition were hampered by his lack of formal training in music theory. In 1858 he resigned his military commission and spent some time managing his family’s estate, and thereafter held various positions in the Russian civil service. Friendship with more fully trained contemporaries such as Dargomijsky, Cui, Balakirev, and Rimsky-Korsakov was a mixed blessing: their well-intended instruction and suggested “improvements” often conventionalized the original and distinctive expressivity of Mussorgsky’s ideas. Further, a disorganized lifestyle not only diminished his music’s consistency, but also hastened his early death at the age of 42. He left behind many unfinished or incompletely realized works, a number of which were posthumously completed and/or edited (sometimes rather arbitrarily) by his composer colleagues. Not until well into the 20th century did the full range of Mussorgsky’s achievement become evident, thanks to persistent efforts by perceptive scholars and performers. The present program suggests the range of his powers, in works from several periods of his career.


St. John’s Night on Bald Mountain (First Version, 1867)
Mussorgsky conceived this “musical picture” in 1860, initially completed it on June 23, 1867, then abandoned it in this form. A performance of this version apparently took place in London on February 3, 1932, conducted by Nikolai Malko, but not until 1968 was a full score edited and published. Before that, the work was most commonly performed in an arrangement by Rimsky-Korsakov that was characterized by the scholar Gerald Abraham as “virtually a new orchestral piece on Mussorgsky’s various materials.” The original version of St. John’s Night received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on November 27, 1983, with the New York Youth Symphony conducted by David Alan Miller.

Scoring: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, and strings.

In late September 1860, Mussorgsky wrote Balakirev about “a very interesting piece of work which I must prepare for next summer.” This was a Witches’ Sabbath scene from a play entitled The Witch by an army comrade, Georgy Mengden. “The libretto is very good. I already have some materials; the thing might come out very good.” However, nothing much came of the project until 1866, when Mussorgsky reported to his colleague that “I’ve started to sketch the Witches—I’m stuck at the devils—the procession of Satan still doesn’t satisfy me.” But the following summer he informed Rimsky-Korsakov that “On the 23rd day of June, on the eve of St. John’s Day, was written, with God’s help, St. John’s Night on Bald Mountain, a musical picture with the following program:
1. Assembly of witches, their chatter and gossip,
2. Procession of Satan,
3. Vile Glorification of Satan, and
4. Sabbath.”

When Balakirev reacted negatively to the project, Mussorgsky restated his faith in St. John’s Night and declared his intention to change “many things in the percussion instruments, which I have abused.” However, that version, too, would also remain unfinished. The piece was put aside until 1872, when Mussorgsky revised and significantly altered it for use in Mlada, an opera-ballet jointly composed by Borodin, Cui, Rimsky, and himself. In 1880 he expressed an intention to use the St. John’s Night music as an intermezzo in his opera The Fair at Sorochintsy, but at his death the following year neither the projected intermezzo nor the opera was complete, and Mussorgsky never did hear his original St. John’s Night in performance.


Monologue of Boris, from Act II of Boris Godunov
Mussorgsky initially composed the opera Boris Godunov between fall 1868 and December 1869. After an initial rejection by the Mariinsky Theatre’s music committee, he revised and enlarged it, leading to acceptance for a first performance on January 27, 1872. The US premiere took place on March 19, 1913, at the Metropolitan Opera; Arturo Toscanini conducted, and the work was sung in Italian. The first recorded performance of Boris’s monologue at Carnegie Hall took place on January 28, 1941, with Ezio Pinza, bass, and The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons; 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, and strings.

The work that brought Mussorgsky greatest recognition during his lifetime was the opera Boris Godunov, based principally on Pushkin’s 1825 play of the same name (in turn modeled on Shakespeare’s historical plays). Its substance concerns events following the death of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, involving dynastic intrigues and competing claims to the throne. Ivan was succeeded by his son Fyodor, married to the sister of the boyar Boris Godunov, who would function as the new ruler’s mentor and guardian. A rival claimant, the Tsarevich Dimitri (Ivan’s son from a marriage not recognized by the church), died violently—by order of Boris, many believed. On Fyodor’s death, his widow refused the throne, and Boris (ostensibly under public pressure) agreed to take her place. A further unstable element entered the picture when a renegade monk proclaimed himself to be the resurrected Dimitri.

In the opera’s second act, set in the Tsar’s apartments in the Kremlin, Boris visits his children, Xenia and Fyodor, during their lessons and play. After the boy has returned to his studies, the Tsar soliloquizes upon the country’s travails and on his failure to win the people’s favor: even after three years, the populace remains restive, the boyars are suspicious, and the Tsar cannot trust his chief minister, Prince Shuisky. Tormented by guilt, his dreams are haunted by the image of the murdered Tsarevich Dimitri begging for mercy.

Beginning in a declamatory mode, the monologue develops more sweeping lines (both rising and falling) and a more urgent rhythmic pulse as Boris enumerates the country’s ills, then focuses on his personal fears and guilt. At the end, sideslipping chromatics suggest his guilty conscience over the death of the Tsarevich.


Songs and Dances of Death
Orchestrated by Edison Denisov (1929–1996)
Mussorgsky composed the first three of his Songs and Dances of Death (for voice and piano) in St. Petersburg on February 17, April 14, and May 11, 1875, and the fourth at Tsarskoye Selo on June 5, 1877.

Edison Vasilievich Denisov (who owed his unusual given name to his father, a radio-physicist), was born in Tomsk, Siberia, on April 6, 1929, and died in Paris on November 24, 1996. Encouraged by Shostakovich, the young man studied with Vissarion Shebalin, and in later years cultivated an interest in Western avant-garde music, an idiom not officially approved in the Soviet Union at that time. He orchestrated the original piano accompaniments of Songs and Dances of Death in April and May 1983. (He also orchestrated Mussorgsky’s two other song cycles, The Nursery and Sunless.) Today’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of Denisov’s orchestration of Songs and Dances of Death.

Scoring: 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, alto saxophone, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, harp, celesta, glockenspiel, vibraphone, xylophone, triangle, bells, cymbals, snare drum, bass drum, timpani, and strings.

Mussorgsky composed many songs, sometimes to his own texts. Initially working in conventional lyrical, romantic styles, he later explored the possibilities of more naturalistic declamation, based on his studies of Russian folk music and speech.

The poet of the Songs and Dances of Death, Count Arseny Golenischev-Kutuzov, was a descendant of the Marshal Kutuzov who commanded the Russian armies against Napoleon in 1812, and who figures prominently in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Mussorgsky met him through a family connection, and in 1873 the two men agreed to share a flat, an arrangement that seems to have brought some salutary stability into Mussorgsky’s life, and also resulted in two major song cycles to poems written for Mussorgsky by Golenischev-Kutuzov: Sunless (completed in November 1874) and Songs and Dances of Death.

The idea of the latter cycle was suggested by V. V. Stasov, the art and music critic who advised and championed the nationalistic younger Russian composers known as “The Mighty Five.” However, the historically specific dramatic situations he proposed were bypassed by poet and composer in favor of more universal confrontations of humans by Death—particularly situations that could be linked with musical genres. In each of the songs, death visits humans in a disguise appropriate to the situation.

1. Lullaby. The mother of a dying child is visited by Death, who gently and compassionately offers to help relieve her of her anguish, while subtly underlining his concern as against her own self-concern. His song is punctuated with a refrain to soothe the child: “Hush, baby, hush.”

2. Serenade. In a southern European land, an ailing maiden sits at a window, listening to the sounds of the night that urge her to enjoy life. She cannot sleep. Death comes as a serenading cavalier who will end her loneliness and set her free. He serenades her, and she eventually accepts his embrace, as he cries, “You are mine!”

3. Trepak. A cheerful peasant dance is the ironic framework for this nocturnal winter scene, in which Death appears as a helpmate for a drunken peasant, offering to provide a cover of snow as the storm sings him to sleep. (In Denisov’s scoring, Mussorgsky’s whirling downward scales are passed around the orchestra [including percussion], vividly painting the storm winds.)

4. The Field Marshal. Here poet and composer shift focus to an epic scale, presenting Death as the ruthless commander who unites combatants on all sides in the sleep of death.

(Singly and as a cycle, the Songs and Dances of Death have attracted a number of orchestral settings beside those of Edison Denisov. Rimsky-Korsakov orchestrated The Field Marshal; more recently, Shostakovich and the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho have scored the whole cycle.


Pictures at an Exhibition
Orchestrated by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Mussorgsky composed Pictures at an Exhibition as a suite for piano during the first half of 1874, completing it on June 26. In 1922, commissioned by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, Ravel orchestrated Mussorgsky’s work, beginning with the final section, which he finished in May, and completing the entire work that autumn. Koussevitzky conducted the first performance at the Paris Opéra on October 19, 1922; gave the US premiere on November 7, 1924, and the Carnegie Hall premiere on January 31, 1925, during his first season as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; published the score in his Editions Russes de Musique in 1929; and made the first recording the following year with the Boston Symphony.

Scoring: 3 flutes (1st doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (1st doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, rattle, whip, glockenspiel, bells, celesta, xylophone, 2 harps, and strings.

The exhibition of the work’s title was a memorial devoted to the work of Mussorgsky’s friend Viktor Hartmann, an architect and painter whose death in the summer of 1873 evidently sent the composer off on one of his all-too-frequent benders. Perhaps the news that his opera Boris Godunov had finally been accepted for performance put Mussorgsky back on track; in any case, the Hartmann exhibition inspired a suite for piano—Mussorgsky’s most substantial work for that instrument.

It seems that some of the pictures Mussorgsky repainted in tones did not actually appear in the public exhibition, while at least one that was shown—Hartmann’s design for a gate to be built in Kiev commemorating Tsar Alexander II’s escape from an assassination attempt in April 1866—grew much grander in its orchestral clothing. No matter: the original piano suite limns a vividly imagined and cannily structured stroll through the gallery, and in recent decades has assumed its own firm place in the piano repertory.

No composer of the 1920s commanded the resources of the modern orchestra (in its French configuration) as did Ravel, and he believed in the aesthetic validity of transcription, of freshly interpreting an existing work, providing the result met a single important condition: “that good taste presides.” His own practice when writing for orchestra was to begin with a piano version, which he then orchestrated, and he followed the same process with Mussorgsky’s suite. (In fact, he was neither the first nor the last to try his hand at orchestrating it, but Ravel’s scoring has remained the gold standard for orchestral Pictures.) Because Serge Diaghilev had brought a Russian company to Paris to perform Boris in 1908, Mussorgsky’s music already enjoyed a vogue in France. (Later, in 1913, the impresario would commission Ravel and Stravinsky to devise music to fill gaps in the score of Mussorgsky’s incomplete opera Khovanshchina.)

Mussorgsky’s suite comprises ten principal movements, preceded by a “Promenade,” which returns several times later as the visitor to the exhibition progresses from one gallery to the next. (Ravel’s version omits one of these returns.) The following brief descriptions of the movements are based on those included in the first edition of the original piano score, by Mussorgsky’s friend and mentor, the critic V. V. Stasov.

No. 1, Gnomus: A sketch depicting a little gnome, running clumsily on crooked legs. This was apparently a design for a nutcracker (the nuts to be inserted in the gnome’s mouth), intended for the Christmas tree at the Artists’ Club in 1869.

No. 2, The Old Castle: In front of a medieval castle, a troubadour sings a song in siciliano rhythm.

No. 3, Quarrel of Children After Play: An avenue in the garden of the Tuileries in Paris, with a swarm of children and nurses.

No. 4, Cattle: a Polish cart on enormous wheels, drawn by oxen.

No. 5, Ballet of Unhatched Fledglings: Hartmann’s design for the decor of a picturesque scene in the ballet Trilby. (This was produced at St. Petersburg’s Bolshoi Theater in 1871, with choreography by Marius Petipa, music by Julius Gerber, and decor by Hartmann; the “fledglings” were canary chicks.]

No. 6, Two Polish Jews, Rich and Poor: The origin of “Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle,” frequently given as the title of this number, remains unknown.

No. 7, The Market at Limoges: French women quarreling violently in the market. In the autograph manuscript, Mussorgsky wrote—and then crossed out—two versions of the text of this dispute, mainly concerning whether or not a farmer has found his lost cow.

No. 8, Catacombs: Hartmann represented himself examining the Paris catacombs by the light of a lantern. Though the description in the exhibition catalogue read, “Interior of Paris catacombs with figures of Hartmann, the architect Kenel, and the guide holding a lamp,” the autograph score is simply inscribed “Sepulcrum romanum” (Roman sepulcher), and the second part of the piece is prefaced by the following: “N.B.: Latin text: with the dead in a dead language. A Latin text would be suitable: the creative soul of the dead Hartmann leads me to the skulls, invokes them, the skulls shine softly.” Therefore, in the published score this section, based on the music of the “Promenade,” is inscribed “Con mortuis in lingua morta.”

No. 9, The Hut on Fowls’ Legs: In Russian folklore, the tall, bony, witch-like Baba-Yaga lived in a cottage supported by fowls’ legs; her principal mode of locomotion was aboard an iron mortar, which she propelled with a pestle while sweeping away all traces of her passage with a broom. Hartmann’s drawing depicted a clock in the form of Baba-Yaga’s hut, and Mussorgsky added Baba-Yaga’s flight in the mortar.

No. 10, The Heroes’ Gate at Kiev: Hartmann’s sketch was a design for the city gates at Kiev, in the massive ancient Russian style, with a cupola shaped like a Slavonic helmet. The gate was intended to commemorate Tsar Alexander II’s escape from an assassination attempt in April 1866, but was never built. (This was the first movement Ravel orchestrated; as he wrote to Koussevitzky, “I started at the end, because it was the least interesting piece to orchestrate. The rest will go much faster.”)

Copyright © 2008 by David Hamilton

The MET Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, Conductor
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is today regarded as one of the world’s finest orchestras. From the time of the company’s inception in 1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert performances and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish and style.

The Met Orchestra maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals during the 32-week New York season, when the company performs seven times a week in repertory that normally encompasses approximately 27 operas, followed by a series of free parks concerts in New York and New Jersey.

Arturo Toscanini conducted almost 500 performances at the Met, and Gustav Mahler, during the few years he was in New York, conducted 54 Met performances. More recently, many of the world’s great conductors have led the orchestra: Walter, Beecham, Reiner, Mitropoulos, Kempe, Szell, Böhm, Solti, Maazel, Bernstein, Mehta, Abbado, Karajan, Dohnányi, Haitink, Tennstedt, Ozawa, and Gergiev. Carlos Kleiber’s only US opera performances were with the Met Orchestra.

In addition to its opera schedule, the Orchestra has a distinguished history of concert performances. Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with the Met Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who appeared with the Orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moritz Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler. Since the Orchestra resumed symphonic concerts in 1991, instrumental soloists have included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, and Evgeny Kissin, and the group has performed three world premieres: Babbitt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998), Bolcom’s Symphony No. 7 (2002), and Shen’s Legend (2002).

The Orchestra’s current high standing led to its first commercial recordings in nearly 20 years: Wagner’s complete Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine. Recorded by Deutsche Grammophon over a period of three years, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung are winners of an unprecedented three consecutive Grammy Awards in 1989, 1990, and 1991 for Best Opera Recording. Other recordings under Maestro Levine include L’Elisir d’Amore, Idomeneo, Le Nozze di Figaro, Der Fliegende Holländer, Parsifal, Erwartung, Manon Lescaut, and seven Verdi operas. They have recorded two CDs of Wagner overtures, Verdi ballet music, an all-Berg disc with Renée Fleming, and arias albums with Bryn Terfel, Kathleen Battle, and Miss Fleming. The Orchestra’s first symphonic recordings are pairings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; Beethoven’s Eroica with Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphonies; and Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote and Tod und Verklärung.

In the spring of 1991 the Orchestra under the leadership of Maestro Levine began concert touring, which has since taken them several times both across the US and to Europe (including their debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2002), as well as annually to Carnegie Hall. In the spring of 2006 the company returned to Japan for its fifth tour there in 18 years.


Valery Gergiev’s leadership as Artistic and General Director of the Mariinsky Theatre has brought universal acclaim to this legendary institution. Together with the Kirov Opera, Ballet, and Orchestra, Maestro Gergiev has toured in 45 countries including extensive tours throughout North and South America, Europe, China, Japan, Australia, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. This season he celebrates his 20th anniversary as Artistic Director as the Mariinsky Theatre celebrates its 225th season.

Maestro Gergiev is currently Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, Principal Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Conductor of the World Orchestra of Peace. He is Founder and Artistic Director of the Stars of the White Nights Festival, the Moscow Easter Festival, the Gergiev Rotterdam Festival, the Mikkeli International Festival, the Red Sea Festival, and the New Horizons Festival, a contemporary music festival in the Mariinsky Theatre’s new Concert Hall (November 2006).

Born in Moscow to Ossetian parents, Maestro Gergiev studied conducting with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory. At age 24, he was the winner of the Herbert von Karajan Conductors’ Competition. He made his Kirov Opera debut one year later in 1978, conducting Prokofiev’s War and Peace, and in 2003 he led a considerable portion of St. Petersburg’s 300th anniversary celebration, conducted the globally televised anniversary gala attended by fifty heads of state, and opened the Carnegie Hall season with the Kirov Orchestra, the first Russian conductor to do so since Tchaikovsky conducted the first-ever concert in Carnegie Hall.

In 2006 and 2007 Maestro Gergiev brought the Mariinsky Theatre’s production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Metropolitan Opera. This season, as part of Carnegie Hall’s Perspectives: Valery Gergiev, he has appeared in the hall in three concerts with the Kirov Orchestra, three with the Vienna Philharmonic, and in this afternoon’s concert with the MET Orchestra. This season at the Metropolitan Opera he also conducted performances of War and Peace and The Gambler.

Maestro Gergiev is the recipient of the Dmitri Shostakovich Award, the Golden Mask Award, the People’s Artist of Russia, and the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award. In 2005 he won the Polar Music Prize (Sweden) for exceptional international performance and leadership, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands made him a Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion. In 2006, Maestro Gergiev received Japan’s highest award—the Order of the Rising Sun—as well as the highest award of Valencia (Italy), the Silver Medal. The same year he was the winner of the Herbert von Karajan prize (Germany). He is also the 2007 winner of the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour (France).

He has recorded exclusively for Decca (Universal Classics), but appears also on the Philips and DG labels. His vast discography includes many Russian operas (introduced to international audiences by his initiative), a cycle of Shostakovich “War Symphonies” (Nos.4–9), and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic, among many others. Maestro Gergiev’s recording on Decca with the London Symphony Orchestra of Prokofiev’s complete symphonies received the 2007 Gramophone Award for Best Orchestral Performance. In addition, his recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 was released on LSO Live last month, the first of a Mahler cycle with that orchestra.

René Pape, Bass
Opera News has called René Pape “the world’s most charismatic bass.” He has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera every season since 1995, giving four career role debuts there: Méphistophélès in Faust, Gurnemanz in Parsifal, Escamillo in Carmen, and the Old Hebrew in Samson et Dalila. “The luxurious timbre of Pape’s supple, expressive bass is unmistakable, its velvety, dark-brown texture shot with ear-catching flashes of brightness,” stated Opera News of his first Méphistophélès.

Mr. Pape first sang most of his other great roles at the Berlin State Opera, including the title role of Boris Godunov, King Marke in Tristan und Isolde, Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, the title role and Leporello in Don Giovanni, Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro, King Henry in Lohengrin, Rocco in Fidelio, Hunding in Die Walküre, Orest in Elektra, and Ramfis in Aida.

Mr. Pape’s American engagements this season include his first Met Opera appearances as Banquo in Verdi’s Macbeth—his 18th role with the company. Another highlight for American audiences this year will be the release of his first solo arias recording for Deutsche Grammophon in the fall.

Last season Pape sang his first Met King Philip in Verdi’s Don Carlo and Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, and gave his debut with the Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Two seasons ago he sang Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Boston Symphony, and King Henry and Gurnemanz at the Met. Next year he appears in a film of The Magic Flute directed by Kenneth Branagh.

René Pape’s major international debuts were at Bayreuth under James Levine in 1994 in Das Rheingold, in 1997 at London’s Royal Opera in Lohengrin, at the Opéra National de Paris in a 1998 Tristan, and at Lyric Opera of Chicago in Die Meistersinger in 1999.

Educated at the Kreuzchor and the Dresden Conservatory in his home town, Mr. Pape first attained international stature as Sarastro under Georg Solti at the1995 Salzburg Festival. Musical America named him Singer of the Year in 2001; the Opera News Awards honor him this year for his distinguished contribution to opera.