Love and harmony combine,

Joys upon our branches sit,

This is my favorite work from the fall 2017 recording season.  I find both Blake's poem and this music quite romantic.  

Russian winter is setting in. Another shot of Vodka called for at once.  The cavalry gallops over the Steppes, Cossacks with their swords out as brass, strings, and percussions rise to the challenge.  More Mussorgsky chords ensue, then a chain of harmonic suspensions until the left hand gallops up with a noble theme and the Red Army Choir calms everyone down.  Then Baba Yaga shows up with an overactive coffee percolator which percolates in arpeggiated contrapuntal rhythms to the theme.  After an impressive display of horsemanship the Caffeinated Cossacks dismount and pass the melody to the Celestial Bells.  The bells and the coffee percolator perform a charming pas-de-deux as the bubbling music and the sunset both slowly fade, late-night FM DJ style.

Modest Mussorgsky pulls Claude Debussey out of the lake.  The swans look on with bemused superiority, hissing and shaking their heads.  It all ends well enough with a picnic lunch and a concluding ascending F major arpeggio.

The Mussorgsky continues until morale improves, which it does at the end of this piece with a romantic theme and a starry ending.

Waves of Modest Mussorgsky's chordal constructions fall upon my digital shores.