Opis: Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition Orchestral & Solo Piano

The drunken sot who glares out at us from Ilya Repins celebrated portrait looks more like a tramp than a composer, and Mussorgskys music has a similarly uncompromising expressive power, music that seems to work despite rather than
because of itself. Pianists have wrestled with the unpianistic corners of his most famous work since he composed it in 1874 in memory of his friend, the painter Viktor Hartmann, who had died the previous year.
Mussorgsky portrayed some of Hartmann's pictures in music when they were displayed at an exhibition in Saint Petersburg. The cycle of ten individual paintings is linked by the famous promenade, symbolizing the viewer of the pictures wandering through the exhibition. Hartmanns bold and puzzling vignettes find their perfect analogue in Mussorgskys pianistic reimagining, but fellow composers could hardly leave the orchestral potential of this
often-awkward music alone. Ravel wasnt the first to mix his orchestral palette with Mussorgskys colours, but his version has justly stood the test of time, and stands alone for its sensitivity to the pungent, folkloristic flavour of the original.
Here is a rare and useful opportunity to compare the two versions side by side, completed by more music by Mussorgsky both wellknown (Night on Bare Mountain) and perhaps less familiar (assorted miniatures that make up the rest of the composers slender output for piano). The composer and conductor Igor Markevitch was a celebrated interpreter of Pictures, and this is his third recording.
Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition is one of the most famous and most frequently performed romantic piano cycles of the entire repertoire. It contains colourful, highly original and gripping musical depictions of a series of painting by Mussorgskys friend Hartmann: the menacing and evil Gnomus, the mysterious Old Castle, the frolicsome chicks just out of the egg, quarrelling children, the busy marketplace full of chattering women, and then moving into more sinister regions of the Catacomb (with the Dead in the language of the Dead), the brutal force and terror
of the witch Baba Yaga, culminating in the glorious Great Gate of Kiev. This work is so rich and picturesque , that it is hard to resist to make an orchestral arrangement of it, and several composers wrote their own orchestration, the most famous that by Maurice Ravel (a master orchestrator). Nevertheless the piano score leaves ample opportunity to
trigger the creativity of the pianist, and the interpretation by Russian pianist Alexander Warenberg is one of great imagination and authority. This release offers both the original piano version and the Ravel orchestration, filled up with the orchestral A Night on Bare Mountain and the more modest, but no less impressive piano cycle by Tchaikovsky: The Seasons.
Other information:
Markevitch has succeeded in bringing out the purely Russian nature of the score while most of the other
conductors seem to be unduly influenced by Ravels orchestration (Gramophone).

Szczegóły: Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition Orchestral & Solo Piano

Nazwa: Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition Orchestral & Solo Piano
Producent: Brilliant Classics
Kod paskowy: 5028421949314
Języki: angielski
Format: 14.0x12.0cm
Oprawa: Plastikowa
Waga: 0.11 kg
Wykonawca: Gewandhausorchester Leizig, Igor Markevitch, Alexander Warenberg, Nino Gvetadze, Vovka Ashkenazy
Typ głównego nośnika: AC
Ilość nośników: 2
Opis nośników:

1. CD 1 (CD-Audio)
   1. Promenade 1 (koncert - utwór 01:29)
   2. No. 1, Gnomus (koncert - utwór 02:34)
   3. Promenade 2 (koncert - utwór 00:56)
   4. No. 2, Il vecchio castello (koncert - utwór 03:35)
   5. Promenade 3 (koncert - utwór 00:28)
   6. No. 3, Tuileries (koncert - utwór 01:15)
   7. No. 4, Bydlo (koncert - utwór 02:59)
   8. Promenade 4 (koncert - utwór 00:44)
   9. No. 5, Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks (koncert - utwór 01:18)
   10. No. 6, Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle (koncert - utwór 02:41)
   11. No. 7, Limoges. The Market (koncert - utwór 01:22)
   12. No. 8, Catacombae. Sepulcrum romanum ? Con mortuis in lingua mortua (koncert - utwór 03:53)
   13. No. 9, The Hut on Fowl?s Legs (koncert - utwór 03:45)
   14. No. 10, The Great Gate of Kiev (koncert - utwór 05:21)
   15. Night on Bare Mountain (koncert - utwór 10:24)

2. CD 2 (CD-Audio)
   1. Promenade 1 - No. 1, Gnomus (koncert - utwór 03:56)
   2. Promenade 2 - No. 2, Il vecchio castello (koncert - utwór 05:09)
   3. Promenade 3 - No. 3, Tuileries (koncert - utwór 01:30)
   4. No. 4, Bydlo (koncert - utwór 03:10)
   5. Promenade 4 - No. 5, Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks (koncert - utwór 01:56)
   6. No. 6, Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle (koncert - utwór 01:52)
   7. Promenade 5 - No. 7, Limoges. The Market (koncert - utwór 02:59)
   8. No. 8, Catacombae. Sepulcrum romanum - Con mortuis in lingua mortua (koncert - utwór 03:39)
   9. No. 9, The Hut on Fowl?s Legs (koncert - utwór 03:04)
   10. No. 10, The Great Gate of Kiev (koncert - utwór 05:35)
   11. No. 1, January. By the Fireside (koncert - utwór 04:48)
   12. No. 2, February. Shrovetide Festival (koncert - utwór 02:54)
   13. No. 3, March. Song of the Lark (koncert - utwór 01:40)
   14. No. 4, April. Snowdrop (koncert - utwór 02:08)
   15. No. 5, May. White Nights (koncert - utwór 04:13)
   16. No. 6, June. Barcarolle (koncert - utwór 03:42)
   17. No. 7, July. Song of the Reaper (koncert - utwór 01:43)
   18. No. 8, August. Harvest (koncert - utwór 03:09)
   19. No. 9, September. The Hunt (koncert - utwór 02:55)
   20. No. 10, October. Autumn Song (koncert - utwór 03:25)
   21. No. 11, November. Troika2 38 (koncert - utwór 02:38)
   22. No. 12, December. Yuletide (koncert - utwór 03:45)

Recenzje: Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition Orchestral & Solo Piano