Pictures at an Exhibition
MODEST MUSSORGSKY
Born March 21, 1839, Karevo
Died March 28, 1881, St. Petersburg

In the summer of 1873, Modest Mussorgsky was stunned by the sudden death of his friend Victor Hartmann, an architect and artist who was then only 39. The following year, their mutual friend Vladimir Stassov arranged a showing of over 400 of Hartmann's watercolors, sketches, drawings, and designs. Inspired by the exhibition and the memory of his friend, Mussorgsky set to work on a suite of piano pieces based on the pictures and wrote enthusiastically to Stassov: "Hartmann is bubbling over, just as Boris did. Ideas, melodies, come to me of their own accord, like the roast pigeons in the story-I gorge and gorge and overeat myself. I can hardly manage to put it all down on paper fast enough." He worked fast indeed: beginning on June 2, 1874, Mussorgsky had the score complete three weeks later, on June 22, just a few months after the première of Boris Godunov.

The finished work, which he called Pictures at an Exhibition, consists of ten musical portraits bound together by a promenade theme that recurs periodically-Mussorgsky said that this theme, meant to depict the gallery-goer strolling between paintings, was a portrait of himself. Curiously, Pictures spent its first half-century in obscurity. It was not performed publicly during Mussorgsky's lifetime, it was not published until 1886 (five years after its composer's death), and did not really enter the standard piano repertory until several decades after that: the earliest recording of the piano version did not take place until 1942.

Even early listeners were struck by the "orchestral" sonorities of this piano score, and in 1922 conductor Serge Koussevitsky asked Maurice Ravel to orchestrate it. Koussevitsky gave the first performance of Ravel's version at the Paris Opera on October 19, 1922, and it quickly became one of the most popular works in the orchestral repertory. This recital offers the rare opportunity to hear this familiar music performed in its original version.

The opening Promenade alternates 5/4 and 6/4 meters; Mussorgsky marks it "in the Russian manner." The Gnome is a portrait of a gnome staggering on twisted legs; the following Promenade is marked "with delicacy." In Hartmann's watercolor The Old Castle, a minstrel sings before a ruined castle, and his mournful song rocks along over an incessant G-sharp minor pedal. Tuileries is a watercolor of children playing and quarreling in the Paris park, while Bydlo returns to Eastern Europe, where a heavy ox-cart grinds through the mud. The wheels pound ominously along as the driver sings; the music rises to a strident climax as the cart draws near and passes, then diminishes as the cart moves on. Mussorgsky wanted the following Promenade to sound tranquillo, but gradually this Promenade takes on unexpected power. The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks depicts Hartmann's costume design for the ballet Trilby, in which these characters wore egg-shaped armor-Mussorgsky echoes the sound of the chicks with chirping gracenotes.

"I meant to get Hartmann's Jews," said Mussorgsky of Two Polish Jews, One Rich, One Poor, often called by Mussorgsky's later title Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle. This portrait of two Polish Jews in animated conversation has the rich voice of Goldenberg alternating with Schmuyle's rapid, high speech. Listeners who know Pictures only in the Ravel orchestration will be surprised to find this movement followed by another Promenade; Ravel cut this from his orchestral version, which is a pity, because this appearance of the Promenade brings a particularly noble incarnation of that theme. The Marketplace at Limoges shows Frenchwomen quarreling furiously in a market, while Catacombs is Hartmann's portrait of himself surveying the Roman catacombs by lantern light.

This section leads into Cum mortuis in lingua mortua: "With the dead in a dead language." Mussorgsky noted of this section: "The spirit of the departed Hartmann leads me to the skulls and invokes them: the skulls begin to glow faintly"; embedded in this spooky passage is a minor-key variation of the Promenade theme. The Hut on Fowl's Legs shows the hut (perched on hen's legs) of the vicious witch Baba Yaga, who would fly through the skies in a red-hot mortar-Mussorgsky has her fly scorchingly right into the final movement, The Great Gate of Kiev. Hartmann had designed a gate (never built) for the city of Kiev, and Mussorgsky's brilliant finale transforms the genial Promenade theme into a heaven-storming conclusion.