As we approached the reopening of The, as it was then, Queen’s Gallery following the first lockdown in 2020, what better way was there to bring the curtain down on the series of daily musical journeys I had taken my colleagues on than with a walk through a different gallery for a musical exhibition of our own. 

There are a number of different versions of Pictures at an Exhibition out there and I am going to talk about three of them. Mussorgsky’s original Piano Suite, Ravel’s orchestrated version based on Mussorgsky’s original and a Prog Rock version released in 1971 by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

1 – Mussorgsky – Pictures from an exhibition

Pictures from an Exhibition  – A Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann is a suite of ten pieces (plus a recurring, varied Promenade) composed for piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874. The suite is Mussorgsky’s most famous piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists.

The composition is based on pictures by the artist, architect, and designer Viktor Hartmann. It was probably in 1868 that Mussorgsky first met Hartmann, not long after the latter’s return to Russia from abroad. Both men were devoted to the cause of an intrinsically Russian art and quickly became friends. They likely met in the home of the influential critic Vladimir Stasov, who followed both of their careers with interest. According to Stasov’s testimony, in 1868, Hartmann gave Mussorgsky two of the pictures that later formed the basis of Pictures at an Exhibition. In 1870, Mussorgsky dedicated the second song (“In the Corner”) of the cycle The Nursery to Hartmann. Stasov remarked that Hartmann loved Mussorgsky’s compositions, and particularly liked the “Scene by the Fountain” in his opera Boris Godunov. Mussorgsky abandoned the scene in his original 1869 version, but at the requests of Stasov and Hartmann, he reworked it for Act 3 in his revision of 1872.

The years 1873–74 are associated with the staging of Boris Godunov, the zenith of Mussorgsky’s career as a composer—at least from the standpoint of public acclaim. Mussorgsky’s distant relative, friend, and roommate during this period, Arseniy Golenishchev-Kutuzov, describing the January 1874 premiere of the opera, remarked: “During the winter, there were, I think, nine performances, and each time the theatre was sold out, each time the public tumultuously called for Mussorgsky.” The composer’s triumph was overshadowed, however, by the critical drubbing he received in the press. Other circumstances conspired to dampen Mussorgsky’s spirits. The disintegration of The Mighty Handful and their failure to understand his artistic goals contributed to the isolation he experienced as an outsider in Saint Petersburg’s musical establishment. Golenishchev-Kutuzov wrote: “[The Mighty Handful’s] banner was held by Mussorgsky alone; all the other members had left it and pursued his own path …”

Hartmann’s sudden death on 4 August 1873 from an aneurysm shook Mussorgsky along with others in Russia’s art world. The loss of the artist, aged only 39, plunged the composer into deep despair. Stasov helped to organise a memorial exhibition of over 400 Hartmann works in the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in February and March 1874. Mussorgsky lent to the exhibition the two pictures Hartmann had given him, and viewed the show in person. Later in June, two-thirds of the way through composing his song cycle, Sunless, Mussorgsky was inspired to compose Pictures at an Exhibition, quickly completing the score in three weeks (2–22 June 1874). In a letter to Stasov, probably written on 12 June 1874, he describes his progress:

“My dear généralissime, Hartmann is boiling as Boris boiled—sounds and ideas hung in the air, I am gulping and overeating, and can barely manage to scribble them on paper. I am writing the 4th No.—the transitions are good (on the ‘promenade’). I want to work more quickly and steadily. My physiognomy can be seen in the interludes. So far I think it’s well turned …”

The music depicts his tour of the exhibition, with each of the ten numbers of the suite serving as a musical illustration of an individual work by Hartmann.

Five days after finishing the composition, he wrote on the title page of the manuscript a tribute to Vladimir Stasov, to whom the work is dedicated. One month later, he added an indication that he intended to have it published.

Golenishchev-Kutuzov gives the following (perhaps biased) account of the work’s reception among Mussorgsky’s friends and colleagues and an explanation for his failure to follow through on his plans to publish it:

“Soon, with the composition of the musical illustrations for Pictures from an Exhibition by the architect Hartmann, he reached the acme of that musical radicalism, to whose ‘new shores’ and to whose ‘unfathomed depths’ the admirers of his ‘Peepshows’ and ‘Savishnas’ had pushed him so diligently. In music for these illustrations, as Mussorgsky called them, he represented [chicks], children, Baba Yaga in her wooden house on chicken legs, catacombs, gates, and even rattling carts. All this was not done jokingly, but ‘seriously’.”

The suite consists of musical depictions of 10 paintings by Hartmann, interspersed with a recurring “Promenade” theme, or intermezzo, that represents a visitor—in this case, the composer himself—strolling through the exhibition. The powerful nature of the intermezzi, Mussorgsky acknowledged in one of his letters, reflects his own large physique.

Following the opening “Promenade,” the first four movements, or “pictures,” in order of appearance, are: “The Gnome,” a depiction of an awkward dwarf conveyed through irregular rhythms and forceful outbursts; “The Old Castle,” a solemn and lyrical portrayal of a medieval troubadour singing on the grounds of a grand castle; “Tuileries,” a sprightly sketch of children at play in the well-known Tuileries Gardens in Paris; and “Cattle,” a ponderous characterisation of the lumbering of a large Polish ox cart.

The scampering fifth movement, “The Ballet of Unhatched Chicks in Their Shells,” represents a costume design by Hartmann for a children’s ballet. The sixth scene evokes an image of “Two Jews: One Rich, One Poor” through the interplay of a strident melody in the lower register and a twittering chant-like theme in the upper. The folksy and cheerful quality of the seventh movement, “The Market at Limoges,” is neutralised by the eighth, “The Catacombs,” which casts an eerie shadow with ominous chords and variations on the recurring intermezzo.

The last two scenes of Pictures at an Exhibition are the most famous. “The Hut on Fowl’s Legs” is a nightmarish portrayal of the cackling witch Baba-Yaga on the prowl for her prey. She charges—bounding in a virtuosic passage in octaves—right into the tenth and final picture, “The Great Gate of Kiev.” With a depiction of Hartmann’s sketch of a proposed city gate topped by cupolas in which carillons ring, Mussorgsky brings the piece to a majestic close.

2 – Orchestration by Maurice Ravel

Ravel was urged by conductor Serge Koussevitzky to make an orchestral transcription of Mussorgsky’s piano set. He agreed and completed the orchestrations in 1922. The results, perhaps surprisingly, do honour to both composers: The elegant Frenchman has not deprived the music of its realistic muscle, bizarre imagery, or intensity, but has heightened them through the use of marvellously apt instrumentation.

Pictures begins with, and several of its sections are preceded by, a striding Promenade theme – so Russian in its irregular rhythm and modal inflection – which portrays the composer walking through the gallery.

1. Promenade: Trumpets alone present the Promenade theme, after which the full orchestra joins them for the most extended statement of the theme’s several subsequent appearances.
2. Gnomus: The Hartmann sketch is of a carved wooden nutcracker in the form of a wizened gnome who breaks the shells in his jaws. The music lurches, twitches, and snaps grotesquely.
3. Promenade: Horn initiates the theme in a gentle mood and the wind choir follows suit.
4. Il vecchio castello: Hartmann’s old castle is in Italy. Bassoons evoke a lonely scene: A troubadour (English horn) sings a sad song, at first to a lute-like accompaniment in violas and cellos.
5. Promenade: trumpet and trombones with full orchestra.
6. Tuileries: The scene is set immediately with taunting wind chords and sassy string figures, and then Mussorgsky’s children prank, quarrel, and frolic spiritedly in the famous Parisian gardens.
7. Bydlo (Cattle): A Polish peasant drives an oxcart whose wheels lumber along steadily (with rhythmic regularity) and painfully (heavy-laden melody in brass).
8. Promenade: Winds, beginning with flutes, then in turn oboes and bassoons, do the walking, this time with tranquil steps.
9. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks: The Hartmann chicks are the ballet dancers in eggshell costumes. Mussorgsky moves from oxcart to fowlyard with disarming ease.
10. Two Polish Jews, One Rich, the Other Poor: The names Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle were later additions to the title of this section, having no authority in Mussorgsky’s score. The composer satirises the pair through haughty pronouncements from the patriarch (winds and strings) and nervous subservience from the beggar (stuttering trumpets).
11. Limoges, the Market Place: The bustle and excitement of peasant women in the French city’s market are brilliantly depicted.
12. Catacombs: The music trudges through the ancient catacombs in Rome on the way to a mournful, minor-key statement of the Promenade theme, titled by Mussorgsky, in Latin – Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (With the dead in a dead language).
13. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga): Baba Yaga, a witch who lives in a hut supported by chicken legs, rides through the air demonically with Mussorgsky’s best Bald Mountain pictorialism.
14. The Great Gate of Kiev: Ceremonial grandeur, priestly chanting, the clanging of bells, and the Promenade theme create a singularly majestic canvas that is as conspicuously Russian to the ear as Hartmann’s fanciful picture of the Gate is to the eye.

3 – Pictures At An Exhibition – Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Keith Emerson heard a performance of Ravel’s version of Pictures At An Exhibition for the first time at The Royal Festival Hall in London. Intrigued, he went to the music publishers Chappell & Co. to purchase the orchestration so he could transcribe it to piano, at which point he learned that it was originally written as a piano piece and subsequently orchestrated.

The suite was the focus of the band’s 9th December 1970 performance at the Lyceum Ballroom in London, a performance which was later made into the concert film Pictures At An Exhibition. Directed by Nicholas Ferguson, the film was released in the UK in 1972 and in the US the following year.

On 26th March 1971 at a stop on their UK tour at Newcastle City Hall in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, the group performed “Pictures At An Exhibition” and released the recording as their first live album. Released in November of that year, the album went to #3 on the UK charts in December, thanks in part to its budget price of £1.49 – the group figured that since it cost them very little to make, they shouldn’t charge much for it. I still have, and play, my vinyl copy of this LP.

In America, their label Atlantic Records had no interest in the album because there were no sections that could be spun off as singles, making radio play very unlikely. Their UK label, Island, responded by shipping copies to America, which sold very well and prodded Atlantic into issuing it Stateside, where it climbed to #10.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer performed the suite at the Isle of Wight Festival on 29th August 1970. The band made their live debut just six days earlier, but they were already seasoned musicians – Emerson came from The Nice, Lake from King Crimson, and Palmer from Atomic Rooster. Thus, they earned a slot at the prestigious festival, playing the same day as The Doors, The Who, and Joni Mitchell. this was the first song Emerson, Lake & Palmer played. ELP ended their performance with a bang, as Lake and Emerson each fired a cannon at the side of the stage, setting the tone for the theatrics that would become a hallmark of the band’s stage shows.

On the album version, Keith Emerson began the piece by playing it on a pipe organ at Newcastle City Hall. Carl Palmer had to play a long drum section while Emerson made his way down the steps back to his keyboard rig.

Radio stations weren’t in the habit of playing entire albums, but Scott Muni, a disc jockey at WNEW in New York City, played this one start to finish on his show. A big supporter of ELP, Muni introduced the band when they played Carnegie Hall on May 26, 1971. According to Carl Palmer, this was the most challenging Emerson, Lake & Palmer piece for him to play. “It’s about 23 minutes, and it’s not actually a time-keeping piece,” he said in an interview. ”It’s more of a unison playing role with fills and sections with melodic instruments. So it’s a very strong supportive role, but not in a time-keeping drummer-type way. It’s more as a fourth instrument, melodic instrument-type role. So “Pictures at an Exhibition” to me really has a lot to offer and a lot to account for overall.”

The band’s arrangement of the suite uses only four of the original ten pieces in Mussorgsky’s suite, along with the linking “Promenades”. The suite was performed live as one continuous piece, with new, group-written sections linking Mussorgsky’s original themes, the specific track markings on pressings were only a guide.

1. Promenade: Organ solo (instrumental, more information see above)
2. The Gnome: Group (instrumental)
3. Promenade: Hammond organ and vocal
4. (Interlude: short synthesiser solo, not a Mussorgsky piece)
5. The Sage: A new picture “drawn” by Lake in the mood of a medieval minnesang, works as sort of romantic prelude to “The Old Castle”
6. (Interlude: Moog-ribbon-controller-solo by Emerson, not a Mussorgsky piece)
7. The Old Castle: The full group performs a heavily accelerated adaptation of the original theme, leading directly into the next section
8. Blues Variation, a twelve-bar blues credited to the group, borrowing themes from both The Old Castle itself, and some of the ex tempore work that Emerson had previously performed with The Nice
9. Promenade: Group (instrumental)
10. The Hut of Baba Yaga: Group (instrumental)
11. The Curse of Baba Yaga is a new title to the middle section of the original piece. The music is again an adaption of the original piece, only the lyrics and vocal is completely new to the piece
12. The Hut of Baba Yaga: Group (instrumental)
13. The Great Gates of Kiev is also the last picture of Mussorgsky’s piano-cycle, with vocals and lyrics added by the group. The piece features a refrain in the middle containing Hammond organ feedback.

It’s interesting to see three different arrangements of the same piece of music. True artistic ingenuity. 

Here we have some links to each version touched on above. I hope you enjoy them. 

Modest Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition: A Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann

Khatia Buniatishvili – Piano

Promenade I

The Gnome

Promenade II

The Old Castle

Promenade III

The Tuileries: Children’s dispute after play

Bydlo

Promenade IV

Ballet of the unhatched chicks

Two Polish Jews: Rich and poor

Promenade V

The market at Limoges

Roman Catacombs – With the dead in a dead language

Baba Yaga: The Witch

The Heroes Gate at Kiev

Orchestration by Maurice Ravel

NYO-USA

David Robertson – Conductor

Carnegie Hall 22nd July 2014.

I. Promenade 

II. Gnomus 

III. Promenade 

Il vecchio castello 

V. Promenade 

VI. Tuileries 

VII. Bydło 

VIII. Promenade 

IX. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks 

X. “Samuel” Goldenberg und “Schmuÿle” 

XI. Limoges, le marché 

XII. Catacombæ (Sepulcrum romanum) and “Cum mortuis in lingua mortua” 

XIII. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba-Yagá) 

XIV. The Great Gate of Kiev 

Emerson Lake and Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition (Live)