
Pictures at an Exhibition: The Piano Concerto? Yes, folks, you heard right. Emile Naoumoff expands Mussorgsky’s score with tacky transitions, vulgar cadenzas, and lumpy orchestrations.
Anyone glancing at the front and back covers of this CD would get the impression that it’s Marriner and the Academy performing Mussorgsky’s Pictures. Would
Busoni’s transcription of the Bach Toccata, Adagio and Fugue BWV 564 largely brings out the best in Evgeny Kissin’s protean technique. He revels in the
Vakhtang Jordania’s Pictures sails daringly into a CD catalog awash in top-notch performances, and quickly begins to take on water. Weighed down by second-rate orchestral
The performances on this disc are predictably fine–vintage Stokowski in fact–and not too badly recorded given their provenance (Royal Albert Hall, 1969). There’s only one
This collection of popular orchestral showpieces is fully worthy of the High Performance label. The late Eduardo Mata conducts a wonderfully varied late-19th/early-20th century program
Although these thoroughly Russian forces–conductor Mark Gorenstein and the Russian Symphony–have chosen the Ravel orchestration of their beloved Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, they’ve put
Alexander Gibson’s 1980s Sibelius cycle on Chandos, one of the first digital sets, was praised for its clean lines, propulsive phrasing, and bracing impact. This
What makes Sviatoslav Richter’s famous Sofia performance of Pictures at an Exhibition so special isn’t so much its virtuosity and brilliance as it is the
It’s great to hear these performances on CD, freed from the low-level LP transfer that robbed particularly Mehta’s contribution of the necessary impact. Ashkenazy’s piano