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Modest Mussorgsky was one of the preeminent Russian composers of the 19th century; along with four of his colleagues he helped to redefine Russian classical music in his time. At an early age Mussorgsky began to play the piano. He continued to develop his music career while also serving in the military, where he met and served alongside the composer Aleksandr Borodin and later studied with Mily Balakirev. Among Mussorgsky’s most famous compositions are Pictures at an Exhibition, Night on Bald Mountain, and the opera Boris Godunov. Late in his life, Mussorgsky was plagued by financial struggles and alcoholism, and his writing slowed as his health deteriorated.
In 1873, Mussorgsky began work on a solo piano suite to memorialize his friend Viktor Hartmann, an artist who had died earlier that year. He finished the suite the following year, titling it Pictures at an Exhibition. Its ten movements depict ten pieces of Hartmann’s artwork, with the repeated “Promenade” movement showing a visitor walking through the gallery. Pictures at an Exhibition is best known in the orchestral version orchestrated by French composer Maurice Ravel in 1922, although several other composers have adapted their own orchestral versions of the suite as well.
French composer Maurice Ravel is renowned particularly for his orchestration, both in his own works and in adaptations of others’ compositions. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire for over a decade, during which time his music gained such a following that his failure to win the prestigious Prix de Rome due to a conservative jury caused a considerable scandal. Among his most famous works are Boléro, Daphnis et Chloé, and Le Tombeau de Couperin. His orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition has also become a staple of the orchestral repertoire.
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