La Musica Classica

Russian virtuoso Lazar Berman performs the famous piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881). This 1874 work depicts the composer's experience at an exhibition of the drawings and paintings of his friend Viktor Hartmann (1834-1873), who had passed away the year before. The succession of contrasting movements represents the viewer walking through the exhibition, catching a glimpse of an interesting drawing or painting and examining it carefully. The "Promenade" sections, with their plodding Russian melody and irregular meter, are transitional movements that show Mussorgsky walking haphazardly among the pictures, before stopping to observe a particularly interesting one.

For each movement (besides the Promenades), the video displays the surviving sketch by Hartmann that most likely inspired Mussorgsky's music. However, as much of his work has not survived, not all the Hartmann pictures shown here have been definitively linked to Mussorgsky's suite (these are conjectures), and some of the images are of rather poor resolution in the video.

Movements:

I. Promenade
II. Gnomus (Latin for "gnome"): The grotesque, faltering music reveals a picture of a small gnome awkwardly running and stumbling along.
III. Interlude (Promenade theme)
IV. Il vecchio castello (Italian for "The Old Castle"): A troubador sings a melancholy song in front of an old Italian castle.
V. Interlude (Promenade theme)
VI. Tuileries - Dispute d'enfants après jeux (French: The Tuileries - A quarrel between children at play): The mocking, singsong melody represents arguing children at play in the Tuileries Gardens, between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde in Paris.
VII: Bydlo (Polish for "cattle"): The morose, lumbering music depicts a Polish wagon drawn by oxen recede into the distance. Musicologists have suggested that this movement is symbolic of the oppression of the hard-working (ox-like) Polish people under the tsars - the suggested Hartmann drawing does not even depict a wagon or cattle.
VIII. Interlude (Promenade theme)

IX. Балет невылупившихся птенцов (Russian: Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks): A playful movement was inspired by Hartmann's sketches of costumes for Marius Petipa's ballet "Trilby" (music by Julius Gerber). The dancers dressed as barely-hatched canary chicks.
X. Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle - Два еврея, богатый и бедный (Yiddish and Russian: Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle - Two Jews, one rich, the other poor): This movement was inspired by two portraits of Jews, and the music is based on Jewish modes. The two contrasting themes are presented separately, and then superimposed.
XI. Promenade
XII. Limoges, le marché - La grande nouvelle (French: The market at Limoges - The great news): This brief, vigorous scherzo shows French woman fighting in a marketplace in Limoges after hearing some sensational news.
XIII. Catacombæ [Sepulcrum romanum] ... Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (Latin: The Catacombs [Roman sepulchre] ... Among the dead in a dead language): The painting that inspired this movement shows Hartmann looking down a dimly lit passage in the Paris catacombs. This gloomy and morbid movement has two separate sections: A chordal, echoing introduction and a sombre reworking of Mussorgsky's "Promenade" theme.

XIV. Избушка на курьих ножках - Баба-Яга (Russian: The Hut on Fowl's Legs - Baba-Yaga - la strega (quella con la scopa)): The drawing that inspired this movement shows a Russian clock in the form of Baba-Yaga's hut. Mussorgsky added music depicting the witch Baba-Yaga flying through the forest in a mortar.
XV. Богатырские ворота [В стольном городе во Киеве] (Russian: The Bogatyr Gates [in the Capital in Kiev]; often called "The Great Gate of Kiev"): The finale is based on Hartmann's architectural design for a magnificent gate arch in Kiev, which was never built. The gates were to be called the "Bogatyr Gates", after the heroes of Russian folklore. The main theme is a grand apotheosis of the Promenade theme and the second theme is based on Russian Orthodox chant.

Yuri Bashmet era crescuto e studiato a leopoli (la mia citta' natale), si e' formato la, poi andato in russia etc.. pero' dice "...io sono un uomo di nazionalità leopoliana, la' sono stati i primi suoni della musica, il primo concerto, il primo bicchiere e il primo bacio."