Khovanshchina: Prelude and Dances of the Persian Slave Girls (orch. Rimsky-Korsakov)

orchestrated by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)

Khovanshchina

Prelude: Dawn on Moscow River

Dances of the Persian Slave Girls

Mussorgsky started work on his opera Khovanschina in 1872 but it was far from complete and largely unorchestrated when the composer finally succombed to alcoholism nine years later. It was left to Rimsky-Korsakov, the most industrious of musical executors, to finish it off. Although his edition has been criticised for sounding more like Rimsky-Korsakov than Mussorgsky - Shostakovich completed a more idiomatic version in 1958 - it was done so promptly and so effectively that the opera was brought to performance only five years after Mussorgsky’s death.

Rimsky’s evocative scoring of the Prelude to the first act has been instrumental in making it almost as popular, in its very different way, as his version of the same composer’s A Night on the Bare Mountain. Its structure, unlike that of the opera which follows, is simplicity itself: an introduction, three statements of a theme - which must be one of the most beautiful of all Russian melodies - and a coda. Described by Mussorgsky himself as “Dawn on Moscow River,” it was intended to give the impression of early-morning smoke drifting from the chimneys, the crowing of cocks, the ringing of matins bells, and the reflection of the rising sun on the domes of the Kremlin. The musical imagery is so poetic that, no less in Rimsky’s scoring than anyone else’s, it achieves just that.

The dance element in Khovanshchina is provided by Prince Khovansky’s Persian slave girls, who are clearly a most attractive asset to his household. They begin with an exotically languorous dance accompanied first by a seductive cor anglais and then by violins. More animated material introduced by a flute invites a more vigorous response and dramatic interventions on percussion stimulate them to a frenzy. Although the intensity of their activity consantly fluctuates and is briefly calmed by a recall of the opening cor anglais melody, the pressure towards the primitively fierce ending is irresisitble.