PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
Created on 19/07/2018Latest update on 07/04/2024
Artist: Modest Moessorgski
Author: Modest Moessorgski
Year: 1874
This piano suite in 16 parts was triggered by an exhibition in Saint Petersburg with pictures made by Moessorgski's friend Victor Hartmann, painter and architect who'd passed recently. All of the pictures discribed have been lost, apart from a sketch for the Great Gate of Kiev. Transformation from piano suite to symphony was finished after the author's death.
Covers:
- 1922:
Maurice Ravel [orchestral version]
- 1931:
Sir Edward Elgar [the Bydlo part, about an ox carried Polish wagon, was copied in The Wagon Passes from his Nursery Suite]
- 1939:
Leopold Stokowski [more Russian orchestration]
- 1971:
Emerson, Lake & Palmer [top 3 album UK, top 10 US]
- 1975:
On April 4, 1866 Tsar Alexander II was almost assasinated in Kiev. A big gate was about to be constructed on the site of the attempt and plans drawn by architect Hartmann already circulated, with a dome shaped like an old Slavic helmet, barred by the imperial censor.
