The booklet-essay suggests that Mussorgsky's music constantly poses a question to his Russian compatriots: 'What are the causes of our country's continuing calamities, and why does the state crush all that is good?'. Anyone who follows today's news from Russia and then experiences this opera will understand what's meant, and while we observe with sympathy we seem no nearer than the citizens of that great, tormented country to finding solutions for its endemic problems.
However, Mussorgsky was not the least of those Russian musicians who found lasting beauty in her history and he expressed it in a powerfully dramatic idiom that drew on folk-music and had both epic qualities and deep humanity as well as an occasional gentleness. There's also an element here of Russian church music, since Khovanshchina has a political and religious theme and is set in the 1680s at the time of Peter the Great's accession. Since the work was unfinished when Mussorgsky died, performances always involve conjectural work, and the version here – which works convincingly – is mostly that of Shostakovich with the choral ending that Stravinsky devised using Mussorgsky's music.
The cast in this live recording isn't one of star opera singers, but they're fully immersed in the drama and the music, as is the chorus and the orchestra under Abbado, and the result is deeply atmospheric.