Search - Johann Sebastian Bach, Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky :: Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition

Any recording of Busoni's transcription of Bach's mighty organ Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C will inevitably be compared with the Vladimir Horowitz performance that opened his "comeback" recital in 1965 and the 78-rpm-era version of Arthur Rubinstein (resurrected on Volume 8 in BMG's Rubinstein Collection). Kissin gives us Horowitz's brilliance, without the nervous affectations and missed notes, and Rubinstein's healthy athleticism and grandeur, without the occasional inattention to detail. In a performance such as this, Kissin convinces us that he is at once the Horowitz and the Rubinstein of our era--and perhaps superior to either. In Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Kissin almost never falters in evoking the inherently Russian quality of the tableaux: the heartbreak of unrequited passion in the "Old Castle"; the lurching to and fro of "Bydlo"; the mimicry of "Tuileries"; the helter-skelter bargain-seeking of "Limoges"; and the spooky depths of "Catacombs" and "Con mortuis in lingua mortua." Perhaps "The "Hut on Fowl's Legs" and "The Great Gate of Kiev" have only been surpassed in live recitals by Kissin himself and, of course, by Sviatoslav Richter--the best of whose live performances, recorded at a 1958 recital in Sofia, is still available on a Philips disc. Kissin's encore, Balakirev's transcription of Glinka's "The Lark," demonstrates that, when it comes to creating a singing line, with sensitive phrasing and exquisite textures, he has no equal among pianists alive today. --Stephen Wigler