Moussorgsky, Modest: Pictures at an Exhibition. Piano

Revised, phrased and fingered by Otto Thümer

The exhibition of the title was a retrospective, collecting works by a little-known artist, Victor Hartmann, who had been a friend of the composer.

For the pieces, Moussorgsky chose from a variety of watercolours, stage designs and architectural drawings. Only in ‘Catacombs’ does he suggest that the work was a memorial to the artist (although Baga-Yaga is the death-witch of Russian folk-lore and probably meant more to a Russian imagination).

The suite is given some coherence by the repetition of the ‘Promenade’, as if Moussorgsky was walking around the exhibition with the listener, describing his reaction in music to the colours and movement of the exhibits.

‘The Great Gate of Kiev’, which gives the suite its monumental ending existed, alas, only in the architect/artist’s dreams.