V. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks - A costume design for a ballet, Trilby, given in Saint Petersburg in 1871 (no connection with George du Maurier’s novel, which was not published until 1893). In this scene, child dancers portray canaries “enclosed in eggs as in suits of armor, with canary heads put on like helmets.” The Ballet is preceded by a short Promenade. VI. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle - Mussorgsky owned two drawings by Hartmann entitled A Rich Jew Wearing a Fur Hat and A Poor Jew: Sandomierz. Hartmann had spent a month of 1868 at Sandomierz in Poland. Mussorgsky’s manuscript has no title, and Stasov provided one, Two Polish Jews, One Rich, One Poor; he seems later to have added the names of Goldenberg and Shmuel. VII. The Market at Limoges - Mussorgsky jots some imagined conversation in the margin of the manuscript: “Great news! M. de Puissangeout has just recovered his cow. . . . Mme. de Remboursac has just acquired a beautiful new set of teeth, while M. de Pantaleon’s nose, which is in his way, is as much as ever the color of a peony.” VIII. The Catacombs - With a great rush of wind, Mussorgsky plunges us directly into the Catacombae - The picture shows the interior of a catacomb in Paris with Hartmann, a friend, and a guide with a lamp. The music falls into two sections, Sepulcrum romanum (Roman Sepulchers) and Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (With the Dead in a Dead Language), a ghostly transformation of the Promenade. IX. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs - A clock in fourteenth‑century style, in the shape of a hut with cocks’ heads and on chicken legs, done in metal. Mussorgsky associated this with the witch Baba Yaga, who flew about in a mortar in chase of her victims. X. The Great Gate of Kiev - A design for a series of stone gates that were to have replaced the wooden city gates, “to commemorate the event of April 4, 1886.” The “event” was the escape of Tsar Alexander II from assassination. The gates were never built, and Mussorgsky’s majestic vision seems quite removed from Hartmann’s plan for a structure decorated with tinted brick, with the imperial eagle on top and, to one side, a three‑story belfry with a cupola in the shape of a Slavic helmet. Program notes by Michael Steinberg
Modest Mussorgsky
Maurice Ravel
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