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Mon, 22 Feb 1999 17:36:21 +0000 |
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Walter Meyer wrote:
>>The speaker was James Billington, who is the Librarian of Congress.
And Mitch Friedfeld wrote:
>And the author of "The Icon and the Axe," one of the best histories of
>Russia ever written.
Indeed, but it is "only", as stated by its subtitle, an interpretive
history of Russian culture and does not devote much space to music.
According to Walter Meyer's report, Billington seems to have based his 1999
lecture on his own book of 1966, which uses secondary sources from before
1960. We now know a lot more, both fact and interpretation, from the
writings of Caryl Emerson and Richard Taruskin. Not to mention the
important German and Russian contributions.
Paul MacKay wrote on Beethoven's birthday:
>I'd like to have some comments on Gergiev's recording of Boris Godounov by
>Philips.
I have bought this recording, but only sampled it, having not yet found the
time to compare it to other recordings. Boris is only boring, when you
have not done your homework properly (the same applies to some other
works).
Apparently, Walter has been attending the usual mixture of two operas, a
conflation of the 1869 and the 1872 versions. I think that only a choice
between them is possible. If only because of this, the recent recording
mentioned by Paul MacKay of both versions separately, is worth hearing.
The Rimsky-Korsakov version should also not be dismissed out of hand, as
should perhaps Shostakovich' and others.
Willem Vijvers<[log in to unmask]>
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