This was Christoff's second recording of Boris and since it is in stereo and is more complete than its mono predecessor it must be, I suppose, the obvious choice for reissue on CD. All the same, I can't help hoping that the earlier deleted 1950s version will appear in this format one day: it had the best Dmitri on record in Nicolai Gedda (Uzunov's vehement, harsh and squally tenor is disappointing by comparison) and was vividly conducted by that great artist Issay Dobrowen. Cluytens is perfectly competent but more in love with the Rimsky-Korsakovian surface of this hybrid score than with its Mussorgskian depths and asperities.
Christoff's triple assumption of Boris, Pimen and Varlaam (why didn't he sing Rangoni, too and thus exert his dominance over the Polish scenes as well?) is common to both sets; he was in very slightly fresher voice in 1952 than in 1962 but there is little else to choose between his interpretations. His Pimen is effectively grave and otherworldly, if a somewhat monochrome figure (necessarily so in the Duma scene, where Christoff/Pimen and Christoff/Boris address each other and must be distinguished somehow). He makes a vastly rumbustious Varlaam, though in full voice the impression of Tsar Boris in a wig and false nose on a weekend trip to the Lithuanian border is rather disconcerting. But as the Tsar himself Christoff is sui generis: a voice of gold-brocaded black, unforgettable image of implacable authority riven by guilt and aching tenderness.
Like his exemplar Chaliapin, however, he takes great liberties with the vocal line, 'expressively' distorting it at emotional moments and surrounding it with groans, sighs, snarls and sobs. Why not, you might ask, in the context of such a toweringly histrionic reading and of Rimsky-Korsakov's profoundly liberty-taking recension of the score? In a note accompanying the libretto the late Gerald Abraham compares Rimsky's Boris to Mozart's rescoring of Messiah, as ''a masterpiece in its own right''. So in its own way is Christoff's portrayal, and now that we have Fedoseyev's recording (on Philips) to demonstrate how much greater a masterpiece Mussorgsky's score is than Rimsky's wholesale re-composition of it, we can perhaps afford to be more indulgent than censorious towards this Mussorgsky/Rimsky/Christoff star vehicle: it is wrong, but magnificently wrong.
Lanigan's brilliantly etched, guileful Shuisky, Diakov's inquisitorial Rangoni and Lear's elegantly acted Marina are the best of what must be described as the supporting cast, though the Feodor is firm-voiced and the Simpleton reedily plangent. The Xenia is very shrill, and catches the microphone unawares once or twice. Otherwise, apart from a slightly fizzy quality to the fuller choral passages, the recording still sounds pretty good if a few candlepower brighter on CD than I recall it being on the original LP. The break between the second and third CDs is rather awkward (the third disc begins with the word ''but''), but it is good to see a CD libretto printed in large and legible type.'