PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION – Modest Mussorgsky (orchestration by Maurice Ravel)
Born: March 21, 1839. Karevo, in the province of Pskov, Russia Died: March 28, 1881. Saint Petersburg
Composed: June 1874, and completed on the 22nd of that month. Maurice Ravel received a commission from Serge Koussevitzky to orchestrate the work, which he executed during the summer of 1922 in Lyons‑la‑Forêt World Premiere: (Ravel’s orchestration) October 19, 1922. Serge Koussevitzky conducted in Paris P rogram Notes : In 1922 the French composer Maurice Ravel told the Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky about this set of fascinating piano pieces. Koussevitzky, his enthusiasm fired, asked Ravel to orchestrate them. It was through this orchestration, and through Koussevitzky’s frequent and brilliant performances, that Pictures at an Exhibition became an indispensable repertory item. Ravel was not the first to orchestrate the Pictures, and since his version many others have transcribed them, but I cannot imagine Ravel’s version ever being displaced. It is a model of what we would ask for in technical brilliance, imaginative insight, and concern for the original composer. The pictures are Victor Hartmann’s. He was a close and important friend to Mussorgsky, and his death at only thirty‑nine in the summer of 1873 caused the composer profound and tearing grief. The critic Vladimir Stasov organized a posthumous exhibition of Hartmann’s drawings, paintings, and architectural sketches in Saint Petersburg in the spring of 1874, and by June 22 Mussorgsky, having worked at high intensity and speed, completed his tribute to his friend. He imagined himself “roving through the exhibition, now leisurely, now briskly in order to come close to a picture that had attracted his attention, and at times sadly thinking of his departed friend.” That roving music which opens the suite he calls the Promenade. I. Gnomus (The Gnome) - According to Stasov, this represents “a child’s plaything, fashioned, after Hartmann’s design in wood, for the Christmas tree at the Artists’ Club. . . . It is something in the style of the fabled Nutcracker, the nuts being inserted into the gnome’s mouth. The gnome accompanies his droll movements with savage shrieks.” Il. vecchio castello (The Old Castle) - There was no item by this title in the exhibition, but it presumably refers to one of several architectural watercolors done on a trip of Hartmann’s to Italy. Stasov tells us that the piece represents a medieval castle with a troubadour standing before it. III. Tuileries - The park in Paris, swarming with children and their nurses. Mussorgsky reaches this picture by way of a Promenade. f IV. Bydlo (Cattle) - The word is Polish for “cattle.” Mussorgsky explained to Stasov that the picture represents an ox‑drawn wagon with enormous wheels, but added that “the wagon is not inscribed on the music; that is purely between us.”
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