Nikolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908)
Kashchey the Immortal (1901)
Savva Khastaev (tenor: Kashchey), Antonina Vesenina (soprano: Princess), Irina Shishkova (mezzo-soprano: Kaschcheyevna), Yaroslav Petrynik (baritone: Ivan), Mikhail Kolelishvili (bass: Storm Knight)
Poznań Chamber Choir
Poznań Philharmonic Orchestra/Łukasz Borowicz
rec. 19-23 March 2018, Adam Mickiewicz University Auditorium, Poznań, Poland
DUX 1485 [63.36]
Among the ranks of Rimsky-Korsakov’s sheaf of operas based on Russian folk tales Kashchey the Immortal stands somewhat apart. Unlike his other works in the genre such as Sadko, Mlada, The Snow Maiden, Tsar Saltan and the like, it is short. The aforementioned operas extend in a leisurely fashion, with discursive episodes sometimes of only tangential relevance to the basic plot, over four or more lengthy Acts. But the whole action of Kashchey is condensed into three scenes; and although the composer makes provision in the score for these to be separated by intervals, he has also furnished orchestral interludes to connect them into a single Act of just over an hour in duration. That option is taken in all the recordings I have encountered (admittedly a fairly small number). Indeed the plot of Kashchey the Immortal, or Kashchey the Deathless as it is sometimes termed, is very basic indeed. It reduplicates that of The Firebird, the first ballet score by Rimsky’s pupil Igor Stravinsky, but curtails even that scenario by the omission of the Firebird herself who in the ballet brings about the happy ending. Instead we are provided with a slightly irrelevant sub-plot where the Prince Ivan (familiar from the ballet) is seduced from his pursuit of the unnamed Princess (also familiar from Stravinsky) by the wiles of Kashchey’s enchantress daughter. This sub-plot, which provides most of the action of the second scene, combines elements from three distinct Wagnerian sources. Firstly we encounter the temptation of the Prince, which recalls Kundry’s enticement of Parsifal; then the gullible Prince is provided with a Nibelung-like draught of forgetfulness, which makes him forget his true love; and finally, when the enchantress has him at her mercy, she lifts a sword to kill him only to relent when she realises the depths of her own love – a full-on Tristan and Isolde moment. This leads to the final denouement, when as she sheds tears of remorse she effectively destroys the soul of the demonic Kashchey paving the way for a final quartet of rejoicing in which she somewhat heartlessly joins in celebration of the death of her father. Not a very satisfactory version of the legend, then – Stravinsky and his colleagues managed the whole business far more satisfactorily.
Nor unfortunately is the music of such quality as to redeem the unsatisfactory nature of the libretto. Stravinsky clearly did not scruple to purloin from his teacher some elements which he employed in The Firebird – the persistent use of tritonal harmonies to suggest the kingdom of Kashchey, and even elements of the Infernal Dance in close imitation of passages in Mlada – but in general he made better use of them. Rimsky’s melodic fecundity, which yields such delightful results in the many orchestral suites which he extracted from his operas, is in rather short supply here. The best tune comes at the opening of the third scene, when the princess sings a lullaby to the entranced and sleeping Ivan; and even here Stravinsky produced better results in the berceuse with which the Firebird sends Kashchey’s court to sleep. Kashchey’s retinue of monsters is here reduced to a single spirit, a rather bumptious “Storm-Bogatyr” who conjures up a snowstorm at one point but otherwise is confined to various imitative passages representing blizzards and so on which don’t really sound supernatural enough to justify the length to which they are protracted especially during the transition from the first to the second scene. And the plot elements extracted from Wagner during that second scene simply fail to rise to the level of their original models. The most interesting music is that provided for Kashchey himself: not the expected bass monster, but a high-lying character tenor who recalls Mime in his cackling enjoyment of his own wickedness. However he remains offstage for far too long after the opening scene, and his final appearance only to be summarily defeated is rather perfunctory. The choral writing which is so enjoyable a feature of Rimsky’s other fairy-tale operas is also heavily short-changed, with a single chorus during the snowstorm and a brief concluding quatrain.
Nevertheless none of Rimsky’s operas deserve to be condemned to total oblivion, and Kashchey has garnered a number of recordings over the years. There were actually two versions on 78s (where the primitive sound clearly totally fails to do any sort of justice to Rimsky’s orchestration) and a later 1991 Bolshoi version under Andrei Chistiakov, well cast and with voices largely devoid of the besetting Russian sins of Slavonic vibrato and white pinched tone; this set also managed to achieve a sensible balance between voices and Rimsky’s sometimes heavy orchestration, despite some close observation of individual instruments in the most characteristic Soviet recording tradition. There was a 1995 recording under Gergiev (starring Konstantin Pluzhnikov) as part of his Kirov cycle of Rimsky operas, now only available on CD as part of a boxed set of eleven discs; and a 1986 filmed version (also with Pluzhnikov) coupled somewhat oddly in a double-bill with Rachmaninov’s Aleko which still appears to be available on DVD although at an exorbitant price. I have not heard either of the latter sets, although it is probably fair to describe Pluzhnikov’s full-on style of delivery as an acquired taste. This new set, from Polish rather than Russian sources, provides an agreeable alternative and the recording is excellent. However the voices are somewhat more closely observed than in the 1991 Bolshoi set, not always to the best advantage; and the general style of the singing is indeed close to that provided for Chistiakov.
The recording is described as deriving from concert performances (although how this squares with sessions over five days is unclear) but there is no evidence of audience presence and the sound is clear-cut. Savva Khastaev is a little closer to the written notes in the score in his notated cackling passages than was Alexander Arkhipov on the Bolshoi set, but the sound remains characterful enough; but the close microphone placement for Mikhail Kolelshvili as his Storm Knight lacks any sense of mystery or enchantment, leaving just a sense of generalised bluster. The two female voices both suffer from occasional passages of bleached tone, but both also rise to the climaxes with plenty of power and assurance. Best of all is Yaroslav Petrynik as the Prince, who rises to Rimsky’s high-lying passages (during his seduction scene he soars to a high A) without any sense of strain. The chorus could perhaps have been rather larger in numbers, but they are clear enough – even too clear in Rimsky’s extraordinary modulation to the closing key in the final chorus, where clashing semitones barbarically undermine the sense of rejoicing.
The 1991 Bolshoi set, in its original Chant du Monde CD incarnation, was supplied with texts in French and English but oddly enough not in the original Russian; this new version gives us the Russian in Cyrillic script with Polish translation, but no French or English translations at all. This of course makes it almost impossible for the listener to actually find their place in the text unless they read Cyrillic. But then the plot although not ideally coherent is nonetheless not difficult to follow, and the composer’s own libretto is no literary masterpiece; even so, in the case of such a rarity as this any failure to render comprehension easier can only be regretted. Nevertheless, with single discs of the Bolshoi and Kirov recordings only now available on download (and presumably therefore without texts or translations at all), this new CD appears to have the field more or less to itself. It is handsomely packaged, with the disc and booklet contained in a cardboard sleeve, a one-page English synopsis and a booklet essay by Ilona Iwańska (in Polish and English) which attempts to impose a politically allegorical interpretation on both the story and Rimsky’s musical techniques.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
