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MODEST MUSORGSKY
Pictures from an Exhibition (1874; orchestrated by Ravel in 1922)

Modest Musorgsky met noted painter and architect Viktor Hartmann in 1868. The artist and composer were most likely introduced to one another by the critic and art historian Vladimir Stasov, whose influence on 19th-century Russian culture was immense. However they became acquainted, Musorgsky and Hartmann shared a vision of Russian cultural nationalism that permeated their work, and they became close friends. Indeed, Hartmann helped Stasov convince Musorgsky to retain the “Scene by the Fountain” in his opera Boris Godunov.

After Hartmann’s sudden death in August 1873, Stasov organized an exhibition of his paintings and drawings at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg that opened in February 1874. (Tragically, most of Hartmann’s paintings were later dispersed or destroyed, casualties of revolution and war.) Musorgsky, who was devastated by Hartmann’s passing, attended this exhibition. The artist’s paintings and drawings inspired him to compose a suite for piano that he entitled Pictures from an Exhibition. Starting on June 2, 1874, the composer worked quickly, completing the score in just 22 days. The radical harmonic innovations of the piece took Musorgsky’s musical colleagues aback. Pictures from an Exhibition was thus published after the composer’s death in an 1886 edition “corrected” by his well-meaning friend Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Musorgsky’s original intentions were finally revealed in 1931 through the publication of an accurate edition of the piece prepared by the Soviet musicologist Pavel Lamm.

In 1922 the conductor Serge Koussevitzky commissioned Maurice Ravel to create an orchestration of Pictures. Koussevitzky conducted the premiere of Ravel’s orchestration on October 19, 1922, during a concert at the Paris Opera. Many others, including Leopold Stokowski and Lucien Cailliet, have orchestrated the original score, although Ravel’s is the one most often performed today.

While Musorgsky may well have modeled his Pictures from an Exhibition upon Robert Schumann’s Carnaval, which is also a suite of character pieces for piano based on a unifying narrative, the varied “Promenade” movements dispersed throughout the score were the composer’s wholly original invention. Each time the “Promenade” returns in a modified form, Musorgsky portrays his own subjective reactions to Hartmann’s art. Through this strategy, he invites the listener to share these reactions: His perceptions become indistinguishable from our own perceptions as we “see” Hartmann’s drawings aurally through the prism of the composer’s sensibility.

After the confident opening Promenade, the listener immediately encounters a grotesquely violent creature called Gnomus. A subdued restatement of the Promenade is followed by The Old Castle, replete with a troubadour’s song that Ravel assigns to the saxophone. A brief and confident return of the Promenade heralds the Tuileries, a playful description of children quarreling in the Parisian gardens. The next movement, Bydlo, portrays a lumbering Polish oxcart with enormous wheels; this is followed by a tranquil reiteration of the Promenade. Next comes the chirping Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells, which was inspired by a costume drawing that Hartmann made for a ballet entitled Trilby, or the Elf of Argyle.

In his edition of Musorgsky’s original piano score, Lamm followed Stasov’s 1881 obituary for the composer by titling the next movement “Two Jews, One Rich and the Other Poor.” The American musicologist Richard Taruskin has noted that Musorgsky’s original title was “Samuel” Goldenberg and “Schmuÿle.” (Taruskin has opined further that this music is a “distasteful portrayal” rife with its composer’s anti-Semitism.) Ravel omitted the fifth Promenade found in the piano suite, preferring instead to plunge directly into Limoges: The Market, an effervescent musical depiction of a group of vivacious Frenchwomen on market day. Catacombs: Sepulcrum romanum is a stark contrast to the extroversion of Limoges: The deeply introspective return of the Promenade that follows is subtitled “Cum mortuis in lingua mortua” (To the Dead in a Dead Language). This dark mood is broken by the brusque opening of The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga), a portrayal of the malevolent witch from Russian folklore. As Baba Yaga’s hurly-burly reaches a climax, the scene changes suddenly to The Great Gate of Kiev, a majestic finale filled with bells and evocations of Russian chant.

                                                                                —Byron Adams

Program notes © 2021. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

 

 

MODEST MUSORGSKY
Pictures from an Exhibition (1874; orchestrated by Ravel in 1922)

Modest Musorgsky met noted painter and architect Viktor Hartmann in 1868. The artist and composer were most likely introduced to one another by the critic and art historian Vladimir Stasov, whose influence on 19th-century Russian culture was immense. However they became acquainted, Musorgsky and Hartmann shared a vision of Russian cultural nationalism that permeated their work, and they became close friends. Indeed, Hartmann helped Stasov convince Musorgsky to retain the “Scene by the Fountain” in his opera Boris Godunov.

After Hartmann’s sudden death in August 1873, Stasov organized an exhibition of his paintings and drawings at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg that opened in February 1874. (Tragically, most of Hartmann’s paintings were later dispersed or destroyed, casualties of revolution and war.) Musorgsky, who was devastated by Hartmann’s passing, attended this exhibition. The artist’s paintings and drawings inspired him to compose a suite for piano that he entitled Pictures from an Exhibition. Starting on June 2, 1874, the composer worked quickly, completing the score in just 22 days. The radical harmonic innovations of the piece took Musorgsky’s musical colleagues aback. Pictures from an Exhibition was thus published after the composer’s death in an 1886 edition “corrected” by his well-meaning friend Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Musorgsky’s original intentions were finally revealed in 1931 through the publication of an accurate edition of the piece prepared by the Soviet musicologist Pavel Lamm.

In 1922 the conductor Serge Koussevitzky commissioned Maurice Ravel to create an orchestration of Pictures. Koussevitzky conducted the premiere of Ravel’s orchestration on October 19, 1922, during a concert at the Paris Opera. Many others, including Leopold Stokowski and Lucien Cailliet, have orchestrated the original score, although Ravel’s is the one most often performed today.

While Musorgsky may well have modeled his Pictures from an Exhibition upon Robert Schumann’s Carnaval, which is also a suite of character pieces for piano based on a unifying narrative, the varied “Promenade” movements dispersed throughout the score were the composer’s wholly original invention. Each time the “Promenade” returns in a modified form, Musorgsky portrays his own subjective reactions to Hartmann’s art. Through this strategy, he invites the listener to share these reactions: His perceptions become indistinguishable from our own perceptions as we “see” Hartmann’s drawings aurally through the prism of the composer’s sensibility.

After the confident opening Promenade, the listener immediately encounters a grotesquely violent creature called Gnomus. A subdued restatement of the Promenade is followed by The Old Castle, replete with a troubadour’s song that Ravel assigns to the saxophone. A brief and confident return of the Promenade heralds the Tuileries, a playful description of children quarreling in the Parisian gardens. The next movement, Bydlo, portrays a lumbering Polish oxcart with enormous wheels; this is followed by a tranquil reiteration of the Promenade. Next comes the chirping Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells, which was inspired by a costume drawing that Hartmann made for a ballet entitled Trilby, or the Elf of Argyle.

In his edition of Musorgsky’s original piano score, Lamm followed Stasov’s 1881 obituary for the composer by titling the next movement “Two Jews, One Rich and the Other Poor.” The American musicologist Richard Taruskin has noted that Musorgsky’s original title was “Samuel” Goldenberg and “Schmuÿle.” (Taruskin has opined further that this music is a “distasteful portrayal” rife with its composer’s anti-Semitism.) Ravel omitted the fifth Promenade found in the piano suite, preferring instead to plunge directly into Limoges: The Market, an effervescent musical depiction of a group of vivacious Frenchwomen on market day. Catacombs: Sepulcrum romanum is a stark contrast to the extroversion of Limoges: The deeply introspective return of the Promenade that follows is subtitled “Cum mortuis in lingua mortua” (To the Dead in a Dead Language). This dark mood is broken by the brusque opening of The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga), a portrayal of the malevolent witch from Russian folklore. As Baba Yaga’s hurly-burly reaches a climax, the scene changes suddenly to The Great Gate of Kiev, a majestic finale filled with bells and evocations of Russian chant.

                                                                                —Byron Adams

Program notes © 2021. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.