Top 10 Pieces of Music by Mussorgsky

MikeFuller Here is a list of what may be the best tracks of perhaps my favourite composer.

The Top Ten

1 St. John's Night On the Bare Mountain (Original Version)

This music is believed to have been written by Musorgsky in one night! ( 1866, Orchestrated 1867 ). The original version is less well known than the Rimsky-Korsakov version, but is as the composer originaly intended it! The opening chords is the most demonic music ever written! - MikeFuller

2 Boris Godunov

Revolutionary in it's original design! It was altered to suit the St. Petersburg Opera company. Truly Russian with so many great moments! - MikeFuller

3 Pictures at an Exhibition (Original Piano Version)

Mussorgsky wrote this for his friend Victor Hartman. It's about looking at a range of pictures in an exhibition. The prommenade is meant to be the moving on the corridor between the pictures. It was famously orchestrated by Ravel. - MikeFuller

4 Khovanschina

A great opera, with many highlights! - MikeFuller

5 Salammbo

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A great highlight of this Mussorgsky opera is the Chorus Of Tthe High Preistessess. So many of his operas were left unfinished due to his alcaholism. 'The greatest individuals are always linked to their age by some weakness' - Goethe ( 1749 - 1832 ) - MikeFuller

6 A Tear

Mussorgsky was a great Pianist and his piano music and songs are some of the best ever written! His Songs And Dances Of Death could have easily made it on to this list. As could 'Sadly Rustled The Leaves', Sumless Songs and so many others. He had some fame as a pianist towards the end of his life and also as the composer of his masterpiece opera Boris Godunov. He died of an epileptic fit due to alcaholism shortly after his 42nd birthday in 1881. - MikeFuller

A beautiful piano piece written in 1880. - MikeFuller

7 The Destruction of Sennacherib

Mussorgsky's best choral work, inspired by Byron's ( 1788 - 1824 ) famous poem. - MikeFuller

8 Sorochinsky Fair

An opera. The Sorochinsky 'Affair'. - MikeFuller

9 Night On a Bare Mountain (Choral Version)

A reworked version by Mussorgsky, similiar to the Rimsky-Korsakov version with the gorgeous ending and the melody that was reworked for orchestra from his opera Sorochinsky Fair. - MikeFuller

10 The Capture of Kars

Another abandoned opera with the highly impressive Truimphal March in it. - MikeFuller

The Contenders

11 Great Gate of Kiev

A truly 'Russian' sound...

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