Prom 16 - 26.07.17: Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30 Wednesday 26 July 2017
Royal Albert Hall

Franz Liszt: Hamlet
Julian Anderson: Piano Concerto BBC co-commission with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra: world première
Franz Liszt: Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe
Modest Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (orch Maurice Ravel)


Steven Osborne piano
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov conductor


The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and its Principal Guest Conductor, Ilan Volkov, perform two of the last in the series of Liszt's symphonic poems - the mercurial Hamlet, a study of Shakespeare's tragic hero, and From the Cradle to the Grave, one of Liszt's most experimental works. They sit alongside Mussorgsky's much-loved Pictures at an Exhibition and the world premiere of a new piano concerto by Julian Anderson, which offers a tour around 'an imaginary museum' of contrasting worlds and sensations.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I confess to knowing only one of these works. No guesses for which one.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... Mussorgsky's much-loved Pictures at an Exhibition ...

Unless Mr Osborne is going to have a particularly busy night, that much-loved work isn't going to be performed.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Unless Mr Osborne is going to have a particularly busy night, that much-loved work isn't going to be performed.

Sorry, Ferney. I knew you'd be disappointed.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Sorry, Ferney. I knew you'd be disappointed.

[CallMePaul]

Why yet again are we forced to hear Ravel's mutilation of one of the greatest works of 19th century Russian music? His orchestration smooths out so much that you would think that Musorgsky was French! Why can we not somnetimes hear the far more idiomatic orchestrations of Tushmalev, Funtek or the more recent, very Russian-sounding Ashkenazy? Ashkenazy had the advantage, denied to earlier orchestrators, of an Urtext edition of Musorgsky's piano work. This makes a big difference in movements such as Bydlo. Better still, why not put the piano original into a Proms Chamber Music concert?

Also, can concert promoters and otherts please note that Musorgsky (with a single 's') is the accurate transliteration of MM's name from Cyrillic to Roman characters. Most authors now appreciate this and spell his name appropriately.

[Darkbloom]

Why yet again are we forced to hear Ravel's mutilation of one of the greatest works of 19th century Russian music? His orchestration smooths out so much that you would think that Musorgsky was French! Why can we not somnetimes hear the far more idiomatic orchestrations of Tushmalev, Funtek or the more recent, very Russian-sounding Ashkenazy? Ashkenazy had the advantage, denied to earlier orchestrators, of an Urtext edition of Musorgsky's piano work. This makes a big difference in movements such as Bydlo. Better still, why not put the piano original into a Proms Chamber Music concert?

Also, can concert promoters and otherts please note that Musorgsky (with a single 's') is the accurate transliteration of MM's name from Cyrillic to Roman characters. Most authors now appreciate this and spell his name appropriately.

Wasn't there a Prom (maybe 10-15 years ago) which featured different orchestrations side by side? Ashkenazy might have been conducting, but my memory of it is very vague.

[zola]

Wasn't there a Prom (maybe 10-15 years ago) which featured different orchestrations side by side? Ashkenazy might have been conducting, but my memory of it is very vague.

There was but I think it was conducted by Slatkin.

Slightly surprised that Ilan Volkov is conducting the Ravel orchestration. I would not have thought it was his kind of thing ( not a downer on Ravel but on the unsuitability of this particular venture )

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Better still, why not put the piano original into a Proms Chamber Music concert?

- or even in the RAH: Schumann's Carnaval was played there back in 1897 - and Cherkassky performed it before a orchestral work in the RFH back in the '80s. Musorgsky's original "orchestration" is so much more vivid than any other arrangement.

[David-G]

Why yet again are we forced to hear Ravel's mutilation of one of the greatest works of 19th century Russian music? His orchestration smooths out so much that you would think that Musorgsky was French! Why can we not somnetimes hear the far more idiomatic orchestrations of Tushmalev, Funtek or the more recent, very Russian-sounding Ashkenazy? Ashkenazy had the advantage, denied to earlier orchestrators, of an Urtext edition of Musorgsky's piano work. This makes a big difference in movements such as Bydlo. Better still, why not put the piano original into a Proms Chamber Music concert?

Also, can concert promoters and otherts please note that Musorgsky (with a single 's') is the accurate transliteration of MM's name from Cyrillic to Roman characters. Most authors now appreciate this and spell his name appropriately.

It would indeed be interesting to hear Russian orchestrations of "Pictures". However, so far as the transliteration is concerned, surely the reason from spelling his name "Mussorgsky" is that in English the double "s" hardens the sibilant, which would otherwise sound like a "z". Compare "business" and "fussiness". Transliterations should read naturally in the language into which they are transliterated; I am not sure that a literal character-by-character transliteration is necessarily helpful. Also, tradition and usage has something to do with it - otherwise why would we still spell Tchaikovsky with a "T"?

[pastoralguy]

There was a critic who wrote for the Scotsman newspaper who always insisted on spelling the great composer's name Chaikovsky. Mind you, the same critic described his music as 'mindless pap' when it featured in the SNO's summer Proms season! (This appeared to be a generic term since the description also applied to music by Mozart, Beethoven and Sibelius!)

I've forgotten the critic's name...

[Bryn]

Never mind the alternative transliterations of the composer's name, Surely Картинки с выставки is more correctly translated as Picture from an Exhibition. Though I suppose it could equally be Picture from the Exhibition

[seabright]

There was but I think it was conducted by Slatkin ...

Slatkin in fact presented two 'compendiums' at the Proms in which each Promenade and Picture was orchestrated by a different arranger. In 1991 the various arrangers were Maurice Ravel, Henry Wood, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lucien Cailliet, Sergey Gorchakov, Lawrence Leonard, Leonidas Leonardi, Leopold Stokowski and Mikhail Tushmalov.

Slatkin's 2004 edition featured individual Pictures & Promenades arr. by Byrwec Ellison, Gorchakov, Walter Goehr, Emile Naoumoff, Geert van Keulen, Ashkenazy, Carl Simpson, Cailliet, Wood, Lawrence Leonard, Leo Funtek, John Boyd, Stokowski and Douglas Gamley, the latter being 'The Great Gate' with grand organ and male chorus! (This performance has been issued on a 'Warner Classics' CD.)

The Wiki entry on the work (link below) lists about 30 different orchestrations, starting with Mikhail Tushmalov in 1886 and ending with the latest one in 2012 from Peter Breiner. Stokowski conducted his own version in his very first Prom in 1963 and the Henry Wood arrangement was last played at the Proms in 2010 by the National Orchestra of Wales under Francois-Xavier Roth. Anyway, I'm all in favour of giving the Ravel a rest for once and hearing what some of the others on the Wiki list sound like! ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_at_an_Exhibition

[CallMePaul]

Never mind the alternative transliterations of the composer's name, Surely Картинки с выставки is more correctly translated as Picture from an Exhibition. [

As it usually is in German and French!

[Pulcinella]

Never mind the alternative transliterations of the composer's name, Surely Картинки с выставки is more correctly translated as Picture from an Exhibition. Though I suppose it could equally be Picture from the Exhibition

As it usually is in German and French!

But plural pictures, Bryn!


Pictures at an Exhibition (Russian: Картинки с выставки – Воспоминание о Викторе Гартмане, tr. Kartínki s výstavki – Vospominániye o Víktore Gártmane, lit. "Pictures from an Exhibition – A Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann"; French: Tableaux d'une exposition) is a suite of ten pieces (plus a recurring, varied Promenade) composed for the piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.