Mackerras’ Mussorgsky

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Mackerras’ Mussorgsky

When Modest Mussorgsky’s friend, Victor Hartman died in 1873 his drawings and pastels were posthumously exhibited in a St. Petersburg gallery. Mussorgsky payed his friend a musical tribute by writing a suite for piano titled Pictures at an Exhibition. It was later orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, an idea suggested to him by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky.

There are ten musical episodes in Pictures at an Exhibition, separated by “promenades,” with a recurring theme. The various sections range from the playful Gnomes to the noble The Old Castle to the delicate Jardin des Tuileries to the grotesquerie of Bydlo and Baba-Yaga to the folkloric Samuil Goldenberg and Limoges, to the grandly solemn Roman Catacombs.

Mussorgsky’s second opera, Khovanshchina, depicts the time when the powerful Streltzy, came into conflict with the future Peter the Great.

Mussorgsky died in 1881 at the age of forty-two, leaving the score of Khovanshchina unfinished. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov took on the challenge of completing and orchestrating it. The introduction to the opera is a symphonic poem in miniature, vividly depicting the dawn on the river Moskva.

A recording of Mussorgsky music with the late Sir Charles Mackerras leading the New Philharmonia Orchestra is again available through VANGUARD CLASSICS. The performance, the insightful liner notes by Nicholas Slominsky, and the engineering make this CD release most desirable.

Rafael de Acha                  ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”