Pictures at an Exhibition

September 29, 2012 at 8:00 pm
Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts

Josep Caballé-Domenech conductor
Denielle Johnson narrator
Erik Sandvold actor

This presentation examines Ravel’s famous orchestration of Mussorgsky’s mighty piano sequence, Pictures at an Exhibition. We’ll explore the contradictions of a cool and sophisticated 20th-century Frenchman orchestrating a work by a mid-19th-century Russian who was wild and strange and certainly neither cool nor sophisticated. Discover the heartfelt way it memorializes the fate of Mussorgsky’s friend, the artist Viktor Hartmann.

We’ll also explore the art of orchestration. Learn what happens when a composer takes a tune written for piano and turns it into music for an orchestra.

Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Ravel)

More information:
Program notes
Press release

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