The Wild Winds Blow (Duyut vetrï), song for voice & piano

• Date: 1864
• Composer: Modest Mussorgsky
• Period: Romantic (1820-1869)

Review

The Wild Winds Blow, also known as The Winds Are Howling, composed on March 28, 1864, is virtually unique among Mussorgsky's songs. It is a frankly Romantic bit of scene painting, depicting a storm without either invoking the pathetic fallacy or otherwise attempting to do anything more than illustrate N. Kultzov's straightforward description of a tempest. Although storms and other phenomena of the natural world make appearances throughout Mussorgsky's oeuvre, they are always used as mirrors of the poet's or the composer's own state of mind. In The Wild Winds Blow, the storm is a storm. But, for all that, it is an incredibly powerful depiction of a storm in its outer sections, with an only slightly more tranquil central section. Although some critics have found in The Wild Winds Blow gestures that prefigure the final revolutionary scene of Boris Godunov, the storm of Boris, like the star of Tell Me, O Star, is more a lens through which to view the events on stage or the state of the poet's mind. ~ James Leonard, All Music Guide

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Boris Christoff Recital	1999
Moussorgski: Chansons	2003
Moussorgsky: Complete Songs
Mussorgsky Songs, Vol. 3	1996
Mussorgsky: Complete Songs	1995
Mussorgsky: Sorochinsky Fair, comic opera; Nursery No1-7
Mussorgsky: The Nursery: Sunless; Songs and Dances of Death	2003