Pictures at an Exhibition

Expanding on Moussorgsky

I've been reliving my youth. Maybe this is my second childhood, or the answer to a mid-life crisis, but having always been drawn to music, I'm having a lovely time revisiting that past which was 1967 to 1976. I've been checking out from our regional library audio CDs of records that I enjoyed when I was in high school and college. Things like … well, "Abbey Road" by The Beatles, for example — and assorted albums by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

From the later, I rediscovered the pleasures of their electronicized rockified 1971 live performance version of Modeste Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. I remembered bits and pieces over the years and it has been wonderful hearing the work again. I can smile now at how much my college roommates "hated" when I played it—what Philistines they were.

I was surprised, however, at how little synthesizer was used. I have fond but foggy memories of hearing EL&P performing the work on stage, where they made a really big show out of Keith Emerson's polyphonic Moog synthesizer (remember it; one of a kind they claimed) than it really deserved. Of the interludes which might have potentially been synthesized, I've discovered that only about ten percent actually were. The rest were performed using traditional Leslie concert organs/phasing horns and other conventional keyboard instruments—and making us believe through pure Barnum showmanship that they were synthesized.

From the library, I've also checked out a number of recordings of more classical renditions of Pictures at an Exhibition—and become increasingly dissatisfied. You see, almost immediately after the EL&P version, I found a vinyl recording in my parents' collection of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. This was performed from the orchestral arrangement scored by Maurice Ravel in 1922.

I liked the classical instruments and theatrical simplicity of the orchestra, and found a warm place in my heart for that Columbia Masterworks version. Yet, even as I "transferred" the vinyl disk to from my parents collection to mine (I still have it), I was disturbed. There was something not quite … well, not right … and I needed to find out what. That led me on an off-again on-again 25-year dabbling in music research.

Pictures was written in 1874 for the piano and not for the orchestra. And Moussorgsky died before the piece was published in 1886—it was arranged and edited by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Moussorgsky's friend and co-member of "The Fist" or (Moguchaya Kuchka). According to Manfred Schandert, "[Rimsky-Korsakov]—with the best intentions—emended some of [Mussorgsky's] more daring touches, with the result that the work was not printed in its original form."

The corrected, original piano score with Moussorgsky's intended passages was not published until 1931, when its editor Paul Lamm studied the composer's autographed manuscript and other reprints circulated primarily in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, Ravel had already finished, published, and performed his orchestral arrangement. Ravel did what he could with what he had, and I do like other works he composed and arranged—Bolero, for example, used in Blake Edwards' 1979 comedy 10 starring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek.

So many others have taken their bows at the baton of programmes containing Pictures—including Horowitz, Muti, Stokowski, Rostropovich, Slatkin, Fritz Reiner (said to be one of the best)—that one loses count. Even von Karajan couldn't resist recording the piece in 1960.

There might also be an impossible-to-find Igor Stravinsky arrangement (and recording) of Pictures but—if Clinton Nieweg, librarian (ret.) for the Philadelphia Orchestra, is right—this apochryphal mid-1930s score and performance might be non-existent. It is known that Stravinsky and Ravel co-arranged their version of Moussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina in 1913, so such a leap wouldn't be terribly great.

And Isao Tomita, the Japanese synthesizer genius, created—one note at a time, note by note, tone by tone, voicing by voicing—a version that was everything electronic the EL&P version was not. I've heard only heard parts of it (impressive) and have never seen it for sale [update: it's available on Amazon]. I do own and love Tomita's award-winning, best-selling version of Gustav Holst's The Planets.

Pictures at an Exhibition? Hmmm …?

Fast rewind to the late 1980s when I discovered a recording by Vladimir Ashkenazy of his solo piano arrangement of Pictures. I wasn't even aware that such existed and I assumed until prompted to do further research, that Ashkenazy was performing derivative, not original material. How wrong I was—I know better, now. I'm convinced that he is a worthy successor to Paul Lamm, and is in my mind the authority on Moussorgsky's best-known work.

I fell in love with Ashkenazy's piano rendition of Pictures at an Exhibition. It demonstrated so much more virtuosity than Ravel's arrangement—let the music shine out more evocatively instead of through instrumental grandstanding. Even though it was a degraded quality bootleg (they even misspelled Askenazy's name with an "i"), it was still dear to my heart.

Back to the library. They had nothing good in either piano solo or orchestral arrangements of Pictures at an Exhibition. The recordings were heavy-handed, had awful dynamic ranges, and were seriously inferior to Bernstein's recording. I discovered that André Previn had done a version of the Ravel chart, as had Igor Povich, and neither exactly thrilled me.

I was spoiled by that chance hearing of Ashkenazy on the piano, which the library did not have. They didn't even have the New York Philharmonic version. Yet, I wanted to hear something different than the Emerson, Lake & Palmer version. Don't get me wrong, I like it. When I'm in a rock mood, I listen to rock, and EL&P's version is among the best.

But when I'm in a classical mood, nothing in a modern idiom will suffice. It has to be orchestral or continental instrumentation.

Then suddenly, one afternoon Borders had a shrink-wrapped CD of the Ashkenazy version—a newer (and better recorded) release than the bootleg, although it was of the same 1982 London performance. Believe me, I couldn't whip out the checkbook fast enough.

And—miracle of miracles—Ashkenazy had taken upon himself the task of creating a new orchestral arrangement of the definitive Moussorgsky autograph. Under his baton, the London Philharmonia Orchestra recorded his chart in September 1982 and he released both orchestra and piano versions on the same disk.

I've now listened to both complete works (on my fourth hearing today alone) and I am in love with Ashkenazy's full instrumentation. He captures Moussorgsky's playful moments as in Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks, draws out the drama of sections like The Hut on Hen's Legs, stirs up rousing, heroic tone pictures with The Great Gate of Kiev, and yet maintains full dynamic range in such lighter elements as the secondary Promenades. It is powerful but not heavy-handed and it incorporates elements from his piano work that I much prefer to the Bernstein/Ravel version or any of the others.

Bibliography:

Ashkenazy, Vladimir. 1986. Pictures at an Exhibition. London, England: The Decca Record Company Limited. New York, NY: PolyGram Classics, a division of PolyGram Records, Inc.

Bernstein, Leonard; New York Philharmonic. undated. Pictures at an Exhibition. New York, NY: Columbia Masterworks, Columbia Recording Company.

Emerson, Keith, Lake, Greg & Palmer, Carl. 1971. Pictures at an Exhibition. London, England: Island Records Ltd.

Schandert, Manfred; Ashkenazy, Vladimir. 1984. Wiener Urtext Edition: Modest Petrowitsch Mussorgski, fourth edition. Wien (Vienna), Austria: Musikverlag Ges. m. b. H & Co., K. G.

Note also that retired Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Librarian Clinton F. Nieweg () is compiling a list of sheet music sources and recordings of Pictures at an Exhibition. His information will be posted at the Major Orchestra Librarians' Association (MOLA) website www.mola-inc.org. He hopes someone can provide scoring for the Emerson, Lake & Palmer recording (writes Clinton, "So far the sheet music, I am told, is lost.").