Met Orchestra, Modeste Mussorgsky – Gergiev, René Pape

With the Metropolitan Opera season having just finished The Met Orchestra has the time for the last 2 of it 3 concert series at Carnegie Hall. Sunday’s concert was the last in the Carnegie Hall Perspectives: Valery Gergiev series which has lasted all season and presented Mr. Gergiev with both his own Kirov Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Gergiev decided to program a concert of work by the most purely Russian composer of all - Modeste Mussorgsky.

The first piece on the program was St. John’s Night On Bald Mountain was played here in its rare original form by Mussorgsky not the more common version by Rimsky-Korsakoff. This version is perhaps more ragged but retains a greater feeling of a Russian legend – full of awe and wonder and almost child-like. Gergiev played it with great feeling that the audience loved and I suspect Mussorgsky would have approved of.

The next pieces featured the great German bass-baritone René Pape. The first Songs and Poems of Death joined wonderful coloration from the orchestra with the pure tone of Mr. Pape. The impressionistic orchestration was quite a contrast to the straight forward singing. After intermission Me. Pape sang the more familiar Monologue of Boris from Act II of Boris Godunov. It was once again performed in its original version and again it was a pleasure to note the unapologetically pure Russian style. Mr. Pape got several curtain calls – perhaps there will be a Met Boris in his future, at least a woman we met on the subway going home had a strong desire for a Pape Boris.

Mr. Gergiev saved the most popular piece for last, Pictures at an Exhibition as orchestrated by Ravel. This seems to be a crowed pleaser no matter how its played. The last time I heard it Esa-Pekka Salonen and the New York Philharmonic played it fast and rather light and people gave a standing ovation that lasted a good five minutes. Mr. Gergiev and Met Orchestra played a much slower and moodier take on it but the result was the same – a long ecstatic ovation. Gergiev’s version might not have been as much fun, people did not leave the hall whistling it, but it made us feel and think more. I think it was more Russian and more Mussorgsky.