Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, etc.

2010

“Every so often a disc comes along that really makes you sit up. This is such a disc. Tugan Sokhiev is back in his element dispensing star quality with almost every bar of this coupling. If the ability to create atmosphere, to transport, to excite, to provoke reassessment of a piece, are the first signs of greatness then Sokhiev's beautifully heard and richly imagined account of Mussorgsky's Pictures is very much the promise of things to come. It is the case throughout that the subtlety, the piquancy, the Frenchness of Ravel's colourations appear disarmingly pristine – as in 'why have I never noticed that before?' One quibble amid everything that is so well judged (and so well played) is the increasing of tempo as 'The Great Gate of Kiev' is finally flung wide. Why? No quibbles at all about the Tchaikovsky, though. Seriously, this is one of the most impressive accounts since the days of Markevitch and Mravinsky. Sokhiev makes real musical and emotional sense of the notoriously hazardous first movement. The listless, febrile nature of it reaches great heights in the development and coda where the hair-raising tremolando restatement of the first subject achieves real catharsis. Indeed, Sokhiev's songful Toulouse woodwinds – so poetic in the Andantino – cannot for long disguise an air of desperation. The whizz-bang finale delivers that in spades.”