Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky

My favourite composer is Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky.

One of the friends of Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881), grouped around the eminent aesthetician and critic V. V.Stasov, was also the painter Victor Alexandrovich Hartman.

In addition to being inseparable as friends, they also shared their ideas concerning the development of the new national style derived, both in the music and in the visual arts, from the Russian national traditions. Shortly, after Hartman's death Stasov organized an exhibition of the former’ works, which, in turn, prompted Mussorgsky to write a piano cycle, "The Pictures at an Exhibition". Although it was written in 1874 in a very short time, it had to wait for its concert presentation until after the death of the composer. But the work did not receive its full appreciation until several decades later when Maurice Ravel wrote its superb orchestral version (1922). Although several attempts had been made at re-writing Mussorgsky's cycle for the orchestra, only the instrumental version by Ravel which fully respected the compositional signature and the overall impression of the composition stood up to the original and even endowed it with a new artistic quality. In making the instrumentation of The Pictures at an Exhibition, Ravel drew on his creative experience and on his profound knowledge of Mussorgsky's work and the Russian national music.

His instrumentation systematically develops the intrinsic structure of the cycle respecting its harmony and melodic procedures, rather than elaborating only on its color effects. Each of the ten parts of the cycle, but also the Promenades binding them together, has a particular instrumentation reflecting the spirit of Mussorgsky's music and Hartman's paintings.

The two versions of The Pictures at an Exhibition, the original piano version and Ravel's orchestral version- give evidence of the incomparable art of the two authors and of a remarkable spiritual unity of two generations of arts separated by a considerable stretch of time. In the history of music, this is a rare and unique phenomenon.

The orchestral treatment of Mussorgsky's “The Pictures at an Exhibition” is not the only proof of the original instrumental skills of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). Also his other orchestral works including the famous Bolero testify to his technical and compositional mastery and to his exceptional ability for an inventive, even in refined, implementation of his ideas through incomparable sound impressions. The Bolero was written in 1926 as a ballet scene for the group of the celebrated dancer Ida Rubinstein. In form and content, it grows over from the basic rhythmic motive of Bolero, a three- four Spanish folk dance. The gradation of intensity, endless timbre combinations of individual instrumental groups hold the listener in a state of excitement growing with each consecutive variation of the basic theme.