Carnegie Hall

Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881) lived a short and turbulent life, but that is not the most interesting facet of his biography. What is remarkable about Mussorgsky’s story is that, even among his few acknowledged masterpieces, hardly anyone has heard the music he really wrote. Until quite recently, audiences listened not to Mussorgsky’s original works, but to “corrected” versions by his friend and contemporary, composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908). Mussorgsky didn’t care much for formal and technical polish in music; he believed that music must communicate feelings—even reproduce human speech—as clearly and directly as possible.

Such views rankled Rimsky-Korsakov, who could not abide the inherent rawness in Mussorgsky’s music. He seemed to view his friend almost as something of an idiot savant, a composer “so talented, so original,” but one whose music was filled with “absurd, disconnected harmony” and “ugly part-writing.” As condescending as this sounds, Rimsky-Korsakov meant well: Little of Mussorgsky’s music was published during his lifetime, and Rimsky-Korsakov thought that if he could clean up the “artistic transgressions,” he might get the music performed—someone else could produce an “archaeologically exact edition” later. “Later” meant that Mussorgsky’s original version of Boris Godunov—perhaps the greatest of Russian operas—wasn’t heard until nearly 50 years after his death.

One work that Rimsky-Korsakov left untouched was Pictures at an Exhibition. With this solo piano piece, Mussorgsky commemorated his friend, architect and designer Viktor Hartmann (1834–1873), whose untimely death deeply affected the composer. An exhibition in 1874 of Hartmann’s watercolors, drawings, and designs served to assuage Mussorgsky’s grief and inspired the composition of a cycle of 10 piano pieces, each representing one of Hartmann’s creations and linked by a recurring interlude that depicts a stroll through the exhibition. (Pianist Harold Bauer gave the Carnegie Hall premiere of the work on October 19, 1918.)

The final irony is that even though Rimsky-Korsakov didn’t tinker with Pictures at an Exhibition—and the work is considered a masterpiece of the solo piano literature—probably far more people have heard the orchestration of the work by French composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). This version received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on January 31, 1925, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitsky.

Other orchestrated versions of Pictures at an Exhibition received their Carnegie Hall premieres as follows:

• Leonidas Leonardi’s orchestration (US Premiere) with the New York Youth Symphony conducted by Walter Damrosch: December 4, 1924
• Lucien Cailliet’s orchestration (New York Premiere) with The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy: February 16, 1937
• Leopold Stokowski’s orchestration (New York Premiere) with The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Stokowski: November 21, 1939
• Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, and Carl Palmer’s arrangement for rock band (Emerson, Lake and Palmer): May 26, 1971
• Leo Funtek’s orchestration (New York Premiere) with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam: December 13, 1981

Other important works by Mussorgsky received their Carnegie Hall premieres as follows:

• Prelude to Act I and “Dance of the Persian Women” from Khovanshchina (New York Premiere) with the Russian Symphony Society of New York conducted by Modest Altschuler: February 25, 1905
• “Hopak” from Sorochintsï Fair (New York Premiere) with the Russian Symphony Society of New York conducted by Modest Altschuler: January 17, 1907
• Joshua (US Premiere) with contralto Cara Sapin, the MacDowell Chorus, and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Kurt Schindler: March 3, 1911
• Boris Godunov (excerpts) with the Russian Symphony Society of New York conducted by Modest Altschuler: March 6, 1915
• St. John’s Night on Bald Mountain (orch. Rimsky-Korsakov) with the Russian Symphony Society of New York conducted by Modest Altschuler: March 20, 1915
• “Mephistopheles’ Song of the Flea” with tenor Oscar Seagle and pianist Frank Bibb: February 21, 1916
• Songs and Dances of Death with bass Philip Bond and pianist Jane Courtland: February 19, 1950