Galina Vishnevskaya "Songs and Opera Arias".(Sound Recording Review)

Arias and songs by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov. London Philharmonic Orchestra, M. Rostropovich, piano and conductor. Transliterated texts and translations. EMI Great Recordings of the Century 62654

Today, when Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich have resumed honored, influential places in Russian musical life, it's hard to remember that, following their politically motivated expulsion from the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, such a return was by no means a foregone conclusion. Those in charge shamefully tried to erase the Rostropoviches' legacy from memory, altering cast lists and captions in printed material and withdrawing their many recordings from circulation. Upon their emigration to the West, the couple determinedly set about trying to reestablish an enduring aural legacy. This proved less tricky for the maestro than for the soprano, who had made her operetta debut at sixteen and was then in the fourth decade of an intense performing career marked by its unstinting passion and interpretive generosity.

Vishnevskaya will indubitably be remembered as one of the twentieth century's great sopranos, and she certainly made some of its great recordings. The worthy selections here do not fall quite so squarely in that category as does the harrowing Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk that she and Rostropovich recorded during the same period, also ...