Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (CD review)

Also, Night on the Bare Mountain; Khovanshchina Prelude. Ernest Ansermet, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Decca UCCD-7240 (Japan).

A few weeks before this writing a reader asked me if I had ever heard conductor Ernest Ansermet’s 1959 recording of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition because he thought it was quite good. Yes, I had, but I also had to admit it was many years earlier on an old London LP, and I hadn’t thought about it since then, probably because I didn’t care much for the sound. Anyway, I told him I’d try to get hold of the compact disc and give it another try. You’ll find the recording these days on a regular British CD from Decca, an Australian Eloquence CD from Decca, a remastered SACD from Esoteric, a remastered copy in various formats from HDTT (High Definition Tape Transfers), and the one reviewed here from Japanese Decca.

As you know, Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) originally wrote his Pictures at an Exhibition as a piano suite in 1874. He called these vivid tone poems “sound pictures,” but they didn’t go very far with the public. Afterwards, several people orchestrated the suite, the most famous and most often recorded version being the 1922 one we have here by French composer Maurice Ravel. From that point, the music took off and became the basic-repertoire piece we know today. Anymore, because the Mussorgsky/Ravel work became so popular, almost every conductor and orchestra in the world have recorded it, so the competition is understandably intense, with recordings by Fritz Reiner (RCA/JVC, 1957), Riccardo Muti (EMI, 1979), and Lorin Maazel (Telarc/FIM, 1978) heading up my personal list of favorites. It was, therefore, the Reiner, Muti, and Maazel recordings to which I compared the Ansermet rendering.

Interestingly, the first thing one notices about the Ansermet recording is that his Suisse Romande orchestra sounds smaller than the others, almost chamber size. It's not really the size of the group or the quality of the venue, however, and Victoria Hall, Geneva is one of the finest recording locations in Europe. It's just that the Suisse Romande group doesn't have the big, plush, rich sonority of a Chicago or Philadelphia Orchestra, nor do they create quite so luxurious an impression.

The performance is another story. Ansermet handles the Promenades and gnome well, the visitor casually browsing the pictures, the misshapen dwarf extraordinary. The Old Castle has a proper mystery about it; the quarreling children are a bit tame but fun; the ox cart sounds appropriately lumbering; and the ballet of the "Unhatched Chicks" is cute. The two Polish Jews have their rich man-poor man chatter, which comes off with befitting personality; the marketplace is lively; and the catacombs are nicely spooky.

Then we come to the big finish, the "Hut of Baba Yaga," the witch flying through the air looking for human bones, and the "Great Gate of Kiev" with its majestic climax of processions and bells. Here, Ansermet is particularly effective, creating a truly grand, thrilling experience. It's a good rendition, overall, although I still wouldn't quite place it the category of a Reiner or a Muti.

The real highlight of the disc for me was the accompanying material, particularly Night on the Bare Mountain in the Rimsky-Korsakov arrangement. Ansermet takes his time to shape the music and make it both spiritual and scary. Lastly, the program closes with the Prelude  "Dawn over the River Moscow," which Ansermet shapes with beautiful, pictorial grace.

Decca producers James Walker and Michael Bremner and engineers Roy Wallace and James Lock made the recordings in Victoria Hall, Geneva, Switzerland in 1959 (Pictures) and 1964 (Bare Mountain, Khovanshchina). The sound is reasonably clean and clear for old recordings.  A bit of noise reduction has clarified the sonics in Pictures nicely, removing most (but not all) hiss without sacrificing much high-end extension. During quietest passages, one still notices the background noise, though, and as with most noise reduction, it has sucked out a touch of midrange air and life. It's little to fret over, though, and the quick transient attacks, wide dynamics, and general lucidity more than make up for it. When Decca first released the LP, I recall reading that it was something of a demonstration piece. Unfortunately, by the time I heard it on LP, it was in re-release and perhaps not so well pressed. Now we have it in pretty good shape, which most listeners will find pleasing enough. The sound in the two couplings, from about five years later, is noticeably quieter, smoother, and fuller.

Bottom line: It’s all a matter of personal taste, of course, but for my money, I’d rank my own favorite Pictures as those from Reiner (RCA/JVC) first for its characterful performance and vivid sound; Muti (EMI) second for its colorful realization and dynamic impact; Ansermet third (Decca) for its incisive interpretation and acceptably good sonics; and Maazel (Telarc or LIM) fourth for its expressive reading and wide-ranging audio.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa