Richard Todd: >Here thought I knew Mussorgksky's work reasonably well and along comes >a radio announcer announcing something called Sunrise over the Moscow >River. To make matters worse, he claims that this exquisite little >piece comes from Khovanchina, with which I thought I had some >familiarity. Can anyone fill me in? Thanks. I think it's the prelude to the opera, which is spelt in a number of ways. The CD I have containing this work calls it Khovanshchina but I've also seen Khovantschina which seems to be closer to the French and German equivalent spellings - any Russian speakers among our number? It appears to be the prelude to the opera and is variously known as Dawn/Sunrise on/over the Moscow River which don't mean quite the same thing. Mussorgsky left the opera unfinished and the orchestration of the piece in question is usually heard in a version by Shostakovich, whose Op 106 is, apparently, an orchestration of the whole opera. The DG CD 439 892-2, Russian Overtures (Russian National Orch/Mikhail Pletnev, 62:02), has the usual suspects and such rarities as Rimsky's The Tsar's Bride, Glazunov's Ouverture Solennelle, and Tchaikovsky's Overture in F. Richard Pennycuick