Search - Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky :: Mussorgsky, Rimsky Korsakov, Tchaikovsky: Songs and Opera Arias

"Chants et danses de la mort"

Brian Morgan | New Orleans | 05/01/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Galina Vishnevskaya has made many historic recordings, including "War Requiem," "Boris Godunov," "War and Peace," "Tosca," "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk," "Eugene Onegin," "Pique-dame," and "The Poet's Echo." But this 1976 recording of Mussorgsky's "Songs and Dances of Death" just may be her greatest effort in the recording studio. In fact, she and the late Mstislav Rostropovich had recorded the original piano version in 1961, but here they are heard in Dimitri Shostakovich's masterful orchestration of the cycle.



Vishnevskaya's singing is terrifying. Her evocation of Death is without pity, indeed without any vocal "beauty," in the usual sense of the term. It seems, rather, a struggle before the forces of Life and Death, so vivid is she. Once heard, it is never to be forgotten!"