Pictures at an Exhibition
Suite for piano in ten movements by Modest Mussorgsky / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Pictures at an Exhibition[lower-alpha 1] is a piano suite in ten movements, plus a recurring and varied Promenade theme, written in 1874 by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. It is a musical depiction of a tour of an exhibition of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, following his sudden death in the previous year. Each movement of the suite is based on an individual work, some of which are lost.
Pictures at an Exhibition | |
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Suite by Modest Mussorgsky | |
Native name | Kartinki s vïstavski |
Based on | An exhibition of Viktor Hartmann's pictures |
Composed | 2–22 June 1874 |
Dedication | Vladimir Stasov |
Published | 1886 |
Duration | About 35 minutes |
Movements | Ten, plus a recurring, varied Promenade theme |
Scoring | Solo piano |
The composition has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists, and became widely known from orchestrations and arrangements produced by other composers and contemporary musicians, with Maurice Ravel's 1922 adaptation for orchestra being the most recorded and performed. The suite, particularly the final movement, "The Bogatyr Gates", is widely considered one of Mussorgsky's greatest works.