At a Promenade Concert on Monday, August 19th 1991 we heard Leonard Slatkin's brilliant first compilation from nine different orchestrations of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a remarkably successful initiative, reminding us, as it did, of how many arrangements there have been of this evocative score. Then he went for extracts from Lawrence Leonards version for piano and orchestra, from Ashkenazy, Lucien Cailliet, Sergey Gorchakov, Leonidas Leonardi, Sir Henry Wood, Mikhail Tushmalov, Stokowski and Ravel.
It was the indefatigable Edward Johnson, champion of Leopold Stokowski, we had to thank for getting Slatkin interested and finding some of the scores. Now Slatkin has done it again with a new in many ways more way-out compilation including versions by Ellison, Gorchakov, Walter Goehr, Naoumoff, Geert van Keulen, Ashkenazy, Simpson, Cailliet, Wood, Lawrence Leonard, Leo Funtek, Boyd, Ravel and the Australian composer/arranger Douglas Gamley.
Slatkins first compilation, although he played it round the world, has never been commercially released, which makes it all the more pleasing to welcome his second version on this CD from the 2004 Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.
Now there are two possible attitudes to orchestrations of Pictures. There is the po-faced "I cannot be having with anything except Ravel" view, or on the other hand, that this colourful score has endless possibilities and most orchestrations give one a new angle on it. If you incline to the first, stop reading now, but if like me you want a sonic adventure, join Leonard Slatkin in this fascinating exploration, starting and ending with absolutely way-out versions, one of which works and one of which doesnt.
The pictures that inspired Mussorgsky were, of course, by his friend Victor Hartmann (1834-1873), architect, designer and water-colourist, one of that group of artists and musicians who looked to Russia, its folk-song, folk-tales and peasant handicraft as a source of national art in the 1860s. The critic Stassov tells how Hartmann, then in his late twenties, caused a furore when he attended a carnival ball dressed as the witch Baba Yaga. Yet Hartmann was achieving recognition, and in that same year designed the Russian Millenary Monument at Novgorod for which Balakirev's tone-poem Russia was commissioned.
Mussorgsky was stunned by the death of his fertile and brilliant friend at the age of 39, and when a memorial exhibition of Hartmann's work took place in St Petersburg, he quickly responded with four of these familiar piano pieces, soon expanded to ten and linked by interludes (the promenades in which Mussorgsky said that he, himself, could be seen) to become the piano work we know today, first published in 1886.
It was Rimsky-Korsakov who prepared the original Pictures for publication, and indeed it has been reported that the beginning of a sketch of a possible Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration survives, abandoned when his pupil Mikhail Tushmalov took it up. Rimsky certainly conducted Tushmalov's first performance in St Petersburg, on November 30th, 1891, and the only recording ascribes it to "Tushmalov-Rimsky", though on what grounds is not said. Tushmalov must have acquired the printed piano score from his teacher soon after publication and been struck by the opportunities it gave for orchestral colour, though he only chose the opening promenade and seven of the pictures, omitting "Gnomus", "Tuileries" and "Bydlo" (Stokowski, too, later omitted "Tuileries", as well as "Limoges"). Tushmalov was for a time on LP (Acanta DC22128) in a business-like Munich Philharmonic performance conducted by Marc Andreae from 1980 which I cannot trace having been transferred to CD, though Slatkin quarried "Limoges" from it in 1991.
It seems probable that the long familiar version by Ravel and that by the Finnish conductor Leo Funtek were written almost simultaneously and in ignorance of each other, during 1922. The conductor Serge Koussevitzky had introduced Ravel to Mussorgsky's piano original and he had responded by transcribing "The Great Gate of Kiev" during May 1922, finishing the complete transcription shortly before Koussevitsky gave the first performance in Paris on October 19th that year. Meantime, Funtek had been working on his far more sombre version of which he gave the first performance in Helsinki on December 14th, 1922. Interest in Pictures must have been "in the air" because that same year there was also published, in Berlin, a version for salon orchestra (including harmonium and percussion) by Giuseppe Becce. He was an Italian composer of songs, and a pioneer of film music in the silent era, and his version of Pictures, much abridged and never recorded, started with "The Old Castle" and omitted all the promenades!
Once the published score of the Ravel version had become widely disseminated (and the performing materials easily available) Pictures became really popular and the Ravel version was established as the pre-eminent one. It was recorded by Koussevitzky on October 28th, 1930 (DB 1890/3, reissued on Pearl GEMMCD 9020) and certainly in the mid-1930s Pictures was frequently given; for example, at Carnegie Hall it was conducted by Koussevitzky, Stokowski and Toscanini. Despite his "literalist" reputation, when Toscanini recorded it he could not resist making his own revisions to Ravels orchestration.
Perhaps the most obscure version, not so far recorded, is that by Leonidas Leonardi, a Russian-born American who studied in France (and indeed, included Ravel among his teachers) and died in 1967. In his early twenties he prepared a rival version to Ravels at the request of Mussorgskys own publishers, who were taken aback by the success of Koussevitzkys commission. From this score, Slatkin included the "Tuileries" movement in his first compilation. He remarked at the time that the orchestration "seemed like a rushed job" and it is notable he has not returned to it.
In the 1930s there followed orchestrations by the French-born American Lucien Cailliet - for nearly 20 years the bass clarinettist in the Philadelphia Orchestra (VICI4851/4 now on Biddulph WHL 046) and by Leopold Stokowski, both really only known to record collectors. Cailliets version was commissioned by Eugene Ormandy to show off the Philadelphia Orchestra that he had just taken over. It also provided a rival version to the Ravel transcription being performed in Boston by Koussevitzky, then still very much his own property, but it is a rousing view, if more rough-hewn than Ravels.
The Stokowski orchestration is particularly arresting, the arranger making the point that he was deliberately being more Slavic than Ravel. Stokowski omitted two of the pictures "Limoges" and "Tuileries" which he felt not to be authentic.
Stokowski announces his intention to depart from the sophisticated world of Ravel at the outset by presenting the opening promenade on strings, phrased haltingly to depict Mussorgsky's tour of the exhibition. Nevertheless, Cailliet's opening Promenade on woodwind is perhaps the most authentic in this respect. I prefer both to the one recorded here. Stokowskis was first recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra on November 27th, 1939 (DB5827/30, CD reissue on Dutton CDAX 8009) thus creating on pre-war 78s a fairly sharp competition between three brilliant and strongly characterized versions. All this must have contributed significantly to the growth in public interest in Mussorgsky's music, albeit interrupted by the war. Stokowski recorded the work three times and his Decca Phase 4 version of 1966 is on London 443 898-2. Music and Arts CD-765 has Stokowskis memorable 1963 Promenade Concert performance in stunning true stereo, once on King Records in Japan. The Stokey orchestration seems to be the one most widely taken up by other conductors, with versions by the BBC Philharmonic and Matthias Bamert on Chandos (CHAN 9445), the New Zealand Symphony and James Sedares on Koch (37344-2), a live Rozhdestvensky performance on Russian Revelation RV 10073, and most recently by Oliver Knussen with the Cleveland Orchestra on DG (457 646-2). A forthcoming version with the Bournemouth Symphony conducted by Jose Serebrier, variously reported as in great sound, is due out from Naxos in September (8.557645).
Later came other versions, several of which are on CD. Perhaps the most high profile was Vladimir Ashkenazy, the subject of a Promenade Concert in 1989 and coming after he had used the Funtek version in a celebrated TV film still available on video (Teldec 9031-70774-3). The other truly Russian version was that by Gorchakov (recorded by Kurt Masur, who first took it up with the RPO at the Royal Festival Hall in 1983 and recorded it on Teldec 4509-97440-2); Jukka-Pekka Saraste did a composite version of the Gorchakov and Funtek arrangements with the Toronto Symphony on Finlandia 0630-4911-2. Others include the Elgar Howarth brass version (on Doyen CD 011), and the piano-and-orchestra version by Lawrence Leonard, first issued in 1992 with Tamás Ungár the solo pianist and Geoffrey Simon conducting, and currently available on Cala CACD 1030. The story goes on with more familiar versions which include Tomitas synthesiser version and Emerson, Lake and Palmers pop one, as well as those for organ and guitar.
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