Preview: Long live Tsar Boris Feodorovich!

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk, part of Novodevichy Convent, near Moscow, where Boris Godunov, who had been the power behind the throne of his brother-in-law the newly departed Tsar Feodor, retreated in 1584, waiting to be implored to accept the throne. The rise of the curtain is preceded by this deeply forlorn orchestral introduction:

MUSSORGSKY: Boris Godunov: Prelude (ed. Rimsky-Korsakov)

Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. Decca, recorded November 1970

by Ken

No, Sunday Classics isn't back from hiatus exactly. It's more like a hiatus from hiatus. I've been pondering how to proceed with our archival remembrance of that fine conductor Eugen Jochum, and one of the things I had a hankering to represent was his 1957 Munich broadcast performance of Mussorgsky's own version of Boris Godunov, then little heard, with Hans Hotter in the title role. That doesn't qualify as Sunday Classics archival material, though, since we haven't heard any of it yet. What's more, as the post started to take shape, it drifted away from Jochum to focus on the two scenes of the Prologue.

IN THE FIRST SCENE --