RCA album Reviews

Sorry to keep posting new threads. I was just hoping to get some new Tomita conversations going. I really liked this writer's comments on Tomita's RCA releases:

http://home.online.no/~schoenen/ttt.htm

 

I don't always agree with his opinions but he states them well. I guess I either knew of found out more about a lot of the pieces and their classical history. For example both "Clair de Lune" and "Pictures" were both composed for the piano. They are both very popular to orchestrate and have been many times. Ravel's orchestration of "Pictures" is of course very well known and certainly known to Tomita well. That said Tomita is clearly following the subjects of each piece and individualizing in timbre the different melody lines. I'd argue that while there is influence there is as much or more resembalance to Tomita's other arrangement of "Pictures" in the Osamu Tezuka 1960s animated version. Just as much could be said that they both owe something to Rimsky. Conversely Ravel's 'Pavane' is more about chords and he follows with a chordal treatment.

"Night on Bald Mountain" is kind of interesting. Tomita bases the piece on Rimsky-Koraskov's preparation of the score which contains substantial changes from the original. This might not have been commonly known around 1975. Mussorgsky's orchestration is not only instrumented differently but contains differences in melody and whole passages. Interesting enough the piece was adaped by Mussorgsky himself before it was adaped by Rimsky before it was adapted by Tomita. It originated in his unfinished opera "Sorochinsky Fair", interstingly there it had a choir, unlike the stand alone concert versions, so while he's following the smoothing down and easing up that Rimsky gave it, Tomita hears and perhaps subcosnsiously restores a choral accompanyment presumably coming up through from the original.

Almost everything Tomita does makes sense if you realize what he's attracted to. He does like to imagine things as a romantic rather than necessarily harrowing journey into space. Back in the old Synapse article linked in another post, he's very interested in a musician's ability to literally make a tone color, not just blend the ones that are coming out of a standard orchestra. You can hear him wanting to add new sound in his soundtracks. The changes he makes follow from that ability to work in created tone colors. I guess it's like the tone colors themselves become almost performers and insist on taking a little solo now and then.

 

Interesting information about Pictures and NOABM. I didn't know that there were choral bits arranged NOABM (or that it was originally part of an opera), and I didn't know Tomita based his interpretation on a Rimsky-Korsakov arrangement. That's actually very interesting, thanks for writing about that. Were the choir parts that Tomita added anything like the choir parts of Sorochinsky Fair?

I haven't listened to my LPs of Pictures or Firebird (with NOABM) in probably a couple of decades now (ugh). I do remember there were some different sections, albeit few. Funny... the first time I ever heard these works were from Tomita's albums. Hey, I was only 9 or 10! What I found shocking years later was hearing how similar the orchestral version was to Tomita's rendition. Not necessarily timbre for timbre, but in overall tonal color and emotion.

Was Tomita's other version (Tezuka) of Pictures performed by an orchestra?

 

It depends how deeply he studied Mussorgsky. Actually I got the basic history right but the sequence wrong. I found some background.

Mussorgsky got an idea from a play called "the Witch" and was inspired to think about doing something with music based on the subject. "St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain" He completed orchestrating a stand alone piece and his teacher the better educated but only a couple years older and today considered talented but far lower on the music genius scale, Mili Balakirev. Balakirev didn't like Mussorgsky's experimental ideas at all and said it was terrible and Mussorgsky put it aside. Fortunately it wasn't lost and first surfaced unperformed in the late 1960s. Then he worked it into his opera "Sorochinsky Fair" with added choral singing and the morning churchbell ending not in the original. Mussorgsky died at age 42 of something alcolol related. His piano reputation was solid and uncriticized as were songs for piano and voice. He had a success with his opera Boris Gudonov but I think there were some real and perceived problems with staging and playing it. His friend Rimsky-Koraskov took it upon himself to edit and adapt his works involving orchestra into the standards of 1880s Russia. Musical studies show the versions heard for about 100 years are actually Rimsky's adaptatation for orchestra of the slightly less radical material in Sorochinsky Fair - based on his using of the churchbells at dawn passage. So I guess on the one had Rimsky had the respect for his friend not to trample on his credit, on the other hand he reworked and adapted his orchestral work a lot though the upshot was it resulted in frequent and regular performances of Mussorgsky's work. BTW I don't know much of the history of Sorochinsky Fair. I think it was left in very incomplete form and was finished by his friend Ceasar Cui, a prominant composer now regarded on a lower tier than Mussorgsky or Rimsky. Actually Rimsky upped his reputation considerably by writing some excellent works near the turn of the 20th Century and being a good teacher for Stravinsky and died at a moment probably allowing Stravinsky to strike out in very modern directions. "Firebird" was like Stravinsky's farewell to Rimsky and his international calling card.

It must have been the 1980s when classical conductors started to explore and prefer the more violent and unusual original Mussorgsky orchestrations. For example I think Boris Gudonov is more commonly preformed using Mussorgsky's orchestrations now, whereas decades ago afaik only the Rimsky orchestrations were used. I bring this up because Tomita's "Night on Bald Mountain" was recorded I believe before one could easily get a score for let alone hear the Mussorgsky originals. Remember though of course "Pictures" was never orchestrated by Mussorgsky so this info doesn't apply to it other than in possible strategies to orchestrate it.

acoustic, yes, but it was more like smaller ensemble combinations of various instruments for each movement. hopefully now you can imagine why I'm comparing the two.

I think I have Stokowski's and Askenazy's "Pictures" full orchestrations. I'm sure Ravel's is the most brightly colored of the 3 (It couldn't hurt that Ravel used a few instruments not heard when Mussorgsky was composing the piano version). Anyway while I don't deny Ravel must have been some influence it does amount to a piece with a lot of already pretty clear choices given a regular orchestra to work with. Of course the skill is all in the details though.

 

Thanks for writing all the info here, Nick. It's very interesting to read about the history.

Should the year in this sentence should be 1880?:

"Fortunately it wasn't lost and first surfaced unperformed in the late 1960s."