I am not trying to "pick a fight" with you, and if I came off that way, then I apologize. You DID say "But Mussorgsky was Russian, not French, and Ashkenazy's orchestration is more in the Russian tradition, so it is an interesting contrast to Ravel's." This is precisely my point, your objections to my paraphrasing notwithstanding. There is nothing I suggested that is not reasonable based on your stated claim, which suggests quite plainly a basic incompatibility between composer and transcriber on the basis of nationality, and specifically defines the "interest" in Ashkenazy as a function of his work being in a more authentic national style.
And the source you cite merely repeats the same thing, without giving any specifics. If you want to raise the old bugbear about the edition Ravel was working from, that argument won't hold water either--how is Rimsky's edition less "Russian" than Mussorgsky's original? There's a different between textual fidelity, in a scholarly sense, and the stylistics of a national school. Please explain how Rimsky's editorial work, or the omission of a promenade, "de-Russifies' Mussorgsky in any way? You may claim that Ashkenazy's version is closer to Mussorgsky in certain details, and there I would have to agree, but again, this begs the question of whether or not those details are specifically "Russian" in any meaningful way. I would suggest that they are not. I can accept that Mussorgsky had a personal style in his use of melody, harmony, and rhythm that has come to be associated with a particular quality of Russian-ness, but not as regards orchestration. He simply had too little experience in this field, and his output is too small, to reflect much besides his lack of ability.
This doesn't mean that everything Rimsky did was appropriate to Mussorgsky--Shostakovich's editions are perhaps better in this respect--but it's also worth noting that the people least concerned with textual authenticity, historically, have been composers close to Mussorgsky or those most sympathetic to him, all of them just as Russian as he was. That his orchestration is "characteristic" I would not dispute, but often not in a good way, and Ashkenazy's scoring strikes me as demonstrably less Mussorgskian than does Ravel's, which consistently captures the rawness and edge of Mussorgsky's style without its inconsistencies in a way that Ashkenazy (with the exception of Bydlo, where we agree) does not. I'm thinking of Gnomus, Catacombs, Baba Yaga, Two Jews, and the Great Gate, as well as the opening Promenade. And let us not forget that two of pictures, Tuilleries and Limoges, ARE French, so one can't knock Ravel there, while the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks is, similarly, at least aesthetically French.
Even in Bydlo, Ravel's tuba solo is conceptually perfectly in keeping with the Russian tradition--the persistent use of pure tone color, and the simple juxtaposition of wind tone against string accompaniment. And while it may not follow Mussorgsky's original dynamics, Ravel's solution is arguably more apt than Ashkenazy's as reimagined for orchestra (which cannot successfully reproduce the loud banging of the piano's lower octaves), rather than as a more basic attempt at literal transcription. One may well appreciate Ashkenazy for his more literal view, but again, that's not especially "Russian."
One final point: I never suggested that you didn't like Ravel or had a problem with his edition. That is purely your imagination at work. Indeed, although you seemed to take it personally, I did not address you directly at all. My posting in reacting to your comments was in the nature of a general observation about a frequently encountered phenomenon. Too often in the musical world, someone makes an observation or statement about what ought to be an audible fact (or should at least be put in a well-defined and meaningful context), and this is then taken up and parroted, becoming eventually "conventional wisdom." One of the most common examples of this is the nationalist myth that people of one country have a special affinity to music of that country by right of birth, when in reality it's a function of training and experience, of practice more than patrimony. There have been many Russian artists who have been notably poor exponents of Russian music: Vladimir Feltsman (who seems more at home in Bach), and Semyon Bychkov are just two examples.
In the case at hand, we have a classic opportunity to consider the difference between what Ashkenazy says ("I'm Russian and am thus in a better position to capture the true Russian flavor of Mussorgsky"), and what he did, which was to produce an orchestration palpably inferior to Ravel's in most of the points of detail in which it differs (and there are many where it does not), many of which happen to be precisely those aspects that might be called "Russian style." After all, Ashkenazy is not a professional composer or orchestrator, certainly not one to withstand comparison to a certified genius like Ravel, and so the ONLY basis he has to make a claim for the aesthetic legitimacy of his version is his Russian-ness. And THAT, I feel, is largely meaningless based on the audible results of what he achieves.
Dave H
Topic: Classicstoday on Slatkin's "hodge-podge" Pictures (Mussorgsky/everyone) (Read 10913 times)