# Mussorgsky - Pictures at an exhibition



## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

How do you rate this piece?

Orchestra: Berliner Philarmoniker
Conductor: Herbert von Karajan


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

You might have added that this is the orchestration by Ravel (the most famous one, but there are several others). Mussorgsky's work is for piano solo. It makes a world of difference.


----------



## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

Excellent! I am mostly referring to the version orchestrated by Ravel, but I have also listened to the piano original as well as Stokowski's orchestration. Excellent regardless of which version you listen to.


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Regarding the piano version: what most people hear, what most pianists play, is not the Mussorgsky original. The standard piano version was edited and "corrected" by Rimsky-Korsakov. And it was this edited version that Ravel used to make his orchestration. And for some reason, he even made a couple of changes in notes. When the west had greater access to Russian libraries, it became apparent that R-K really sanitized Pictures, and there are now several recordings of the original Mussorgsky version. I like the one on Bis, and I'm too lazy to go look up who the pianist is. There are many different orchestrations of the work, and several of them are much more respectful of the original. My own personal favorite version is the Lucien Cailliet which Ormandy recorded in mono a long time ago. Regrettably, when the Ravel became available (Koussevitsky no longer had a monopoly), Ormandy exclusively used it from then on. Cailliet's has never had a full recording in modern sound. And the score and parts are in dire shape. I would hope that someone in Philadelphia takes an interest and preserves the material, even publish it, and then YNS and the Phil Orch should make a new recording of it.

Another version I really prefer to Ravel is the Funtek, also on a wonderful Bis recording. It actually predates Ravel. Ashkenazy is pretty good, too. As a player I've also encountered the Tushmalov version, which is very much how R-K would have orchestrated it, but it's incomplete. But I've played the Ravel more times than I can remember. It is a brilliant piece of orchestral writing, but Stokowski was right: it's not Russian enough.


----------



## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

mbhaub said:


> . . . there are now several recordings of the original Mussorgsky version. I like the one on Bis, and I'm too lazy to go look up who the pianist is.
> 
> . . . .


Norika Ogawa?

Elsewhere this morning I noted I four recordings of the Ravel orchestration performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.


----------



## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Voted excellent - piano or orchestra/Ravel. I'm not familiar with other arrangements.


----------



## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Art Rock said:


> You might have added that this is the orchestration by Ravel (the most famous one, but there are several others). Mussorgsky's work is for piano solo. It makes a world of difference.


I've sat down with the solo piano version and sight read my way through it. Even used portions to accompany melodramas. Some of it is demonically difficult, but over half of it is pretty playable without too much difficulty.

It's really quite brilliant. *Mussorgsky*'s oddball sense of acceptable harmonic progressions was a bit out-of-the-box for the time.

While I love the piano version, I really enjoy the orchestral versions even more.


----------



## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I prefer the piano version but admit that some pieces, esp. the Great gate work better in orchestral versions. Others (e.g. chicken ballet, Tuileries, Limoges) are better suited to the piano. I have heard one other orchestration, namely by Gorchakov (rec. by Masur for Teldec) but prefer the Ravel and I don't really care enough to check out several other orchestrations.


----------



## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

The original piano version is so curiously unpianistic at times (at some point there are crescendo marks on single chords...), it's a piano piece begging to be orchestrated. And of course the Ravel is a masterclass in orchestration.


----------



## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

pianozach said:


> Some of it is demonically difficult, but over half of it is pretty playable without too much difficulty.


Years ago I was planning the marriage to my first wife, and as the "music" person, I picked the processional and recessional.

For the processional I picked the *Promenade* from *Pictures*, and figured I'd simply record it in advance as it would be somewhat awkward to play at my own wedding.

As it turns out, the wedding chapel had a "_professional_" pianist on hand that gets we have to pay for whether she would be used or not. BUT, strangely enough, the chapel informed us it would cost us MORE to NOT use her. We were reassured that she was a "professional" that could play practically anything. We left the music with the chapel coordinator. I wasn't worried, as I found both the Processional and Recessional to be fairly simple to play.

Come time for the *Processional*, and the "_professional musician_" absolutely butchers it beyond recognition. It seems that she found the shifting time signatures baffling.

She also butchered the *Recessional* as well, the piano transcription of *Pepperland* by *George Martin*.


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

RobertJTh said:


> The original piano version is so curiously unpianistic at times (at some point there are *crescendo marks on single chords.*..), it's a piano piece begging to be orchestrated.


Those are really odd, aren't they? It would be interesting to know if they were in Mussorgsky's original or added by a later editor (R-K)? There are quite a few things that really don't make sense pianistically which has led more than one expert to suspect that Mussorgsky's wasn't so much a piano work as a short-score for a planned orchestral work. Who knows.


----------



## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

mbhaub said:


> Those are really odd, aren't they? It would be interesting to know if they were in Mussorgsky's original or added by a later editor (R-K)? There are quite a few things that really don't make sense pianistically which has led more than one expert to suspect that Mussorgsky's wasn't so much a piano work as a short-score for a planned orchestral work. Who knows.


The odd dynamic markings are in the original autograph, and they don't seem to be added by a different hand (one can check the whole piece at IMSLP, the cresc. and dim. markings are consistent through the entire score.)
So it's plausible that Mussorgsky intended these markings as indications for a future orchestration (that never got realized) - but on the other hand, most other movements are clearly written with the sound and the technique of the piano in mind, they're perfectly idiomatic. Who knows indeed.


----------



## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

RobertJTh said:


> The odd dynamic markings are in the original autograph, and they don't seem to be added by a different hand (one can check the whole piece at IMSLP, the cresc. and dim. markings are consistent through the entire score.)
> So it's plausible that Mussorgsky intended these markings as indications for a future orchestration (that never got realized) - but on the other hand, most other movements are clearly written with the sound and the technique of the piano in mind, they're perfectly idiomatic. Who knows indeed.
> 
> View attachment 176807


There are many explanations that could be plausible, but, yes, the dynamics seem to have been intentional.

1. He may have simply intended a chord louder than the one preceding it. m2 is _p_, while m4 is _ff_; inbetween is the crescendo notation, which to me means it should be somewhere inbetween _p_ and _ff_, probably a _mf_. I've played this, and treat the beginning as though it's a phrased eleven measures.

2. Perhaps Mussorgsky actually wanted a piano chord that got louder, and figured that someday someone would build a piano that COULD do this.

3. It could merely be _intent_; Sometimes when I play piano expressively I will give a piano note 'vibrato'. You can see me physically wobbling my finger on the key. Intellectually I know it doesn't really do a thing, but it _feels_ different in my head, and probably affects the rest of how I play. It's also the difference between F# major and Gb major; yes, for choirs and some instruments these DO sound different, but on a piano, technically, they cannot. Yet I've played a piece (several decades ago) that was printed in both a flat key and in a sharp key version, and though they were both the same piece, with identical notes, the one in the flat key sounded more sonorous, while the one in the sharp key sounded brighter when played from the sharp key version (Gawd I wish I could remember what piece that was). 

4. Yes, indeed, he could have been thinking about a future orchestration.


----------



## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

I love both versions, Abbado and Tugan Sokhiev are two of the favourites on this moment.
Will fil in piano version later


----------



## Scherzi Cat (8 mo ago)

I prefer Ravel's orchestration over the piano version and really love the work.


----------



## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

And for piano version: Sviatoslav Richter /Freddy Kempf /Shura Cherkassky and Vladimir Ashkenazy


----------

