After a well-sung Coronation Scene, the Act 2 sequence captured for us starts after the Clapping Game, with the entrance of Boris. (Reports of this moment emphasize how changed, in appearance and bearing, Chaliapin’s Tsar was from the man of the Coronation Scene, conveying in an instant the lifetime’s-worth of heavy care that has eaten into him in the passage of a few years.) There is at the outset a regrettable cut—in the performance, I gather, not the recording, and unnoted in the booklet—of nearly all of Feodor’s recitation of Russian geography. With Boris’ reply and admonition to his son to study in preparation for his reign, an extraordinary grip takes hold on us and, palpably, on the theatre audience. There are long pauses, taken in a tempo distinctly slower than the marked andante, and as with the Siébel song though with far deeper import, we sense the time being taken for an action to be completed, an affect to sink in, before the music may move on. There’s a hold while Feodor exits and Boris follows him with his eyes or goes with him to the door, then the grave, slowly evolving intro to the monologue, “I have attained the highest power.” Just two phrases in, after the despairing outburst “And yet, no joy comes to my tormented soul,” the orchestra waits, and waits some more, before its murmuring entrance (the muttering inside Boris) for “In vain the fortune tellers promise me,” etc.

We don’t know how Chaliapin staged himself for these moments. I imagine him starting the monologue standing by the door where Feodor has left, then at “And yet,” etc., crossing and sinking into his chair at the table. But it could be the reverse, with Boris starting at his desk and flinging himself out into the room at “And yet.” Or it could be neither. It doesn’t matter. The orchestra must wait not just for the physical action and transition of tempo, but for the actor’s inner change from one mood and line of thought to the next—a change the conductor must pick up before cueing the new beat. It is not a question of following or not following the score, but of inferring from the score what the progression of thought and feeling must be, as they develop in the being of this particular artist. I timed the duration of the monologue proper at 6’45” in this performance, as contrasted with 5’04” in the fine 1931 studio version referred to above, which heard on its own does not sound rushed. That’s an astonishing variation, even for a live v. 78-rpm side comparison. Yet so far from growing impatient with the live performance, we are simply led through it with a greater sense of suspense and completion.

From the monologue we cut to the Clock Scene. We could almost say that Chaliapin invented this scene as we have come to know it. He sings what’s there at the beginning and the end; between, he sings, speaks, and beats Schoenberg to the punch with Sprechstimme à la Russe, sometimes to the words Mussorgsky set, sometimes to Pushkin’s words Mussorgsky didn’t set, and occasionally to his own words.^(I) In one sense, it’s indefensible; in another, it’s indispensable. Take either position, but meanwhile see if you can find another version, from any of the great bassos who have recorded this scene, that equals this one’s power.