Modest Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition (1874)
1. Promenade
2. Gnomus
3. Promenade
4. Il Vecchio Satello (The Old Castle)
5. Promenade
6. Tuileries (Dispute d’enfants après jeux)
7. Bydio
8. Promenade
9. Ballet des Poussins dans leurs Coques (Ballet of Chicks in their Shells)
10. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
11. Promenade
12. Limoges – Le Marché
13. Catacombae (Sepulchrum Romanum)
14. Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua
15. La Cabane sur des Pattes de Poule (Baba-Yaga) (The Hut on Fowl Legs)
16. La Grande Porte de Kiev (The Great Gate of Kiev)
Modest Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition (Orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, 1922)
17. Promenade
18. Gnomus
19. Promenade
20. Il Vecchio Satello (The Old Castle)
21. Promenade
22. Tuileries (Dispute d’enfants après jeux)
23. Bydio
24. Promenade
25. Ballet des Poussins dans leurs Coques (Ballet of Chicks in their Shells)
26. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
27. Limoges – Le Marché
28. Catacombae (Sepulchrum Romanum)
29. Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua
30. La Cabane sur des Pattes de Poule (Baba-Yaga) (The Hut on Fowl Legs)
31. La Grande Porte de Kiev (The Great Gate of Kiev)
Pictures at an Exhibition ©
In these pieces, Moussorgsky had produced a new style of piano writing which deeply influenced later composers. (Debussy, for one: his famous prelude La Cathedrale Engloutie would be unthinkable without ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’. And Ravel, for another: who can imagine Le Gibet without ‘Gnomus’, or Scarbo without ‘Schmuyle’?) The original edition, published in 1886, was heavily edited by his friend Rimsky-Korsakov, and was eventually superseded in a revised critical edition in 1931. But it long laboured under the reputation of being ‘unpianistic’, and though often performed in Russia was comparatively seldom heard in Western Europe until the 1960s. Meanwhile, the strong colouring and the difficult chordal textures had tempted others to arrange the work for orchestra. It may well be that these orchestral versions – especially that of Ravel, which was by far the most popular and frequently-performed – retarded the original version’s acceptance as a masterpiece in its own right.
Liadov (who wrote his own depiction of Baba-Yaga) is said to have contemplated making an orchestration, but never got round to it. Rimsky-Korsakov’s pupil Mikhail Tushmalov produced a partial transcription in 1891 and the British conductor Henry J Wood orchestrated the complete suite in 1915, though he withdrew his version after Ravel’s appeared. Ravel’s orchestration, completed in 1922, is by far the best known, and the pièce de résistance of a master orchestrator, but there have been several subsequent versions, starting with an austerely powerful one by the Finnish composer Leo Funtek completed in the same year as Ravel’s. Leopold Stokowski produced one in 1939, as did the pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1982; the conductors Walter Goehr and Lawrence Leonard each made a version for piano and orchestra (in 1942 and 1977 respectively).
An interesting feature of the various orchestrations is that the number of Promenades is variable, some arrangers (eg. Funtek) including them all, others omitting one or more (Wood omitted four of them; even Ravel omits one). Ravel begins his orchestral transcription – which of course is based on Rimsky-Korsakov’s edition of Mussorgsky’s work, not the later critical edition – boldly, by starting the Promenade as a call to attention by the trumpet and following it up with full brass choir, deployed in a typically Russian, even ‘Russian Orthodox’ sonority. Throughout the ensuing pictures Ravel shows fastidious ingenuity in the way he scores Mussorgsky’s chords, distributing their individual notes or re-aligning their spacing in such a way that he can use woodwind or brass as complete choirs, and reinforcing sforzando accents with pizzicato strings. In ‘Il Vecchio Castello’, his assignment of the haunting bass ostinato to the bassoon, and the troubador’s melody to the saxophone – thus creating one of the most famous solos for that instrument – are strokes of atmospheric genius. And in ‘Bydlo’ he gives the melody to the tuba, creating an equally renowned solo for that instrument.
Yet another classic piece of instrumental solo writing occurs in ‘Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle’, where Mussorgsky’s rapid repeated notes depicting the wheedling and stuttering of the poor Jew are reproduced in a virtuoso triple-tongued passage for muted trumpet. (Goldenberg’s wealth is suggested by the full body of the strings, the violins playing with the rich sonority of the G string.) The Market at Limoges allows Ravel full score to use a large battery of percussion, with toccata-like woodwind writing to characterize the prattling women. In ‘Catacombs’, Ravel conjures the darkness with scoring restricted to brass, double-basses and low woodwind, only bringing in the upper woodwind and strings for the ‘glowing skulls’ of the second part. The percussion come back, with the full orchestra, in ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’, where Ravel clearly – like Mussorgsky himself – had the coronation scene of Boris at the forefront of his mind. The result might be termed a complete apotheosis of the power of the orchestra.
RELEASE DATE: APRIL 2009
CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 656
EAN: 5709499656006
