Pictures at an exposition

Sunday afternoon at the symphony. The cow and I attended Oregon symphony series called "Inside the Score" at the Schnitzer concert hall . The composition performed was, Pictures at an Exposition originally created in 1874 by Modest Mussorgsky for piano. Mussorgsky created the suite for piano after his artist friend Viktor Harman died suddenly at age 39. Mussorgsky had gone to an exposition of Harmans work and created the music as a homage to his friends paintings. The most famous part of the music is the promenade piece that is played as a transition to each of the pieces of art - like you are promenading through a gallery. Moving on to the next piece of art.

The conductor actually talked the audience through the history of Pictures at an exposition. Not about the Paintings but the "SCORE" that was created based on the original Piano suite. It was fabulous to have the conductor talk about the variations of the piece from Ravel's famous interpretation in 1922 to Leopold Stokowski in 1938 to Carl Simpson in 1997. The orchestra played an example from each conductor so the audience could hear the difference of creative interpretation. After the discussion was over, they played Ravel's piece in it entirety.