COMPOSERS: Rachmaninov
LABELS: Chandos
ALBUM TITLE: Rachmaninov - The Miserly Knight
WORKS: The Miserly Knight
PERFORMER: Mikhail Guzhov, Vsevolod Grinov, Andrei Baturkin, Borislav Molchanov, Vitaly EfanoRussian State SO/Valery Polyansky
CATALOGUE NO: CHAN 10264
Of all the one-act operas spun from
the ‘little tragedies’ of the great
Russian poet Alexander Pushkin,
Rachmaninov’s Miserly Knight
has been most successful recently
in showing his treasures to the
world, with several recordings over
the past few years and receiving a
Glyndebourne production
last summer. The centrepiece is
certainly prodigious: a 118-line
soliloquy exposing the protagonist’s
psychology of hoarded wealth and
power, set against a serpentine and
brooding orchestral tapestry. You
could blame Pushkin’s dramaturgy
rather than Rachmaninov’s
theatrical instinct for what flanks
the monologue – a lengthy
preamble setting up the Baron’s
miserliness through the narrative
of his desperate, impetuous son,
and a deliberately anti-climactic
scene in which the father dwindles
from demonic grandee to pathetic
old man as he collapses and dies
before the arbiter of justice.
Valery Polyansky, his orchestra and
singers are at their best – surviving
the recorded spotlight – in these
more matter-of-fact stretches of the
score. The impetus of young gallant
Albert is cleanly delineated by tenor
Vsevolod Grivnov and the orchestral
parrying of his sprightly leitmotif;
and Andrei Baturkhin makes a
handsome if all too brief impact as
the lawgiving Duke in Scene 3.
It’s good to hear a true Russian
bass, Mikhail Guzhov, as the Baron,
but his stalwart monochrome is no
match for the charisma and nuancing
of Sergey Alexashkin, protagonist in
the luxuriously cast DG recording
(how one would love to have heard
Chaliapin in this tailor-made role).
And for all the clean-cut storytelling
of Polyansky’s players, only
the superbly vocalised weeping
and wailing of Neeme Järvi’s
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
in the Prelude and the cellar scene
(reviewed May 1998) brings out
the true tragic grandeur of this
lugubrious score. David Nice