Suite Pictures at an Exhibition – arrangements and transcriptions for orchestra and chamber groups
Suite Pictures at an Exhibition – arrangements and transcriptions for orchestra and chamber groups

Summary/Abstract: Outstanding representative of Russian musical culture, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was imposed at the same time as one of the leading figures of the universal composers of the nineteenth century. Prominent member of The Group of Five, Mussorgsky was not only a pioneer but also an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period, as he strove to achieve a unique identity, its language influences infiltrating deep in the creation of subsequent generations. Modest Mussorgsky conceived in 1874 the Suite Pictures at an Exhibition, in a great piano accomplishment, with a melodic and rhythmic manner of great suggestive force, in an original harmonic and colorful vesting, rich in modal elements, with a unique architectonic construction. Enrolling in the nineteenth century masterpieces gallery dedicated to the piano, the Suite Pictures at an Exhibition is one of the most important achievements of the programmatic instrumental music from the Romantic period. The extremely colorful palette and complex harmonic sonorities, the multitude of voices, timbre and register contrasts that exceed the limits of a single instrument, the piano, all explain that the Suite Pictures at an Exhibition has been subjected for over a century immediately after its publication, to numerous arrangements, transcriptions, adaptations for orchestra, solo instruments or with piano accompaniment, for assemblies of homogeneous or mixed instruments. Inside the informative material on this subject there are about 50 arrangements and transcriptions of the whole piece or fragmentation of Pictures at an Exhibition, which certifies this suite to be included among the works that permanently cause either interpretative imagination or arouse the imagination and creative force in order to achieve unprecedented and inspired instrumentation / orchestration.

• Details
• Contents