Pictures at an Exhibition started life as a piano suite by Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881), a Russian composer. The inspiration for it was Mussorgsky’s tour of an exhibition of paintings by a friend of his who’d died the previous year.
While the piano suite had some popularity, a lot of composers arranged it for orchestra. These days, if you find a listing of Pictures at an Exhibition recordings, most of them will be for orchestra, and most of them will be Maurice Ravel’s arrangement from 1922.
The work has 10 movements separated, mostly, by promenades. The promenades represent Mussorgsky walking to that paintings. The movements represent the paintings themselves.
The promenades are different variations of the same melody. The melody is also the basis of the last painting, The Gate of Kiev, but way grander.
Some bits of The Gnome remind me of the dramatic music from the original Star Trek – they could easily be background for a scene with Kirk in a gladiator pit or fighting a Gorn.
Bits of The Hut of Baba Yaga make me think of the Grinch dashing through the snow on his sled to steal the kids toys.
Pictures and me
My introduction to Pictures was when I was 15. I was waiting for a friend at his place and I was exploring his record collection. One of the records was Paintings at an Exhibition by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.
I gave it a listen. I enjoyed some bits. Other bits didn’t work for me. Back then, it was harder for me to enjoy longer instrumentals, so I was inclined to prefer the bits with Lake’s singing.
I soon found out about what I mistakenly thought was the original work – Ravel’s orchestration. For a while, I preferred ELP’s version. some time in my 30s or 40s, that flipped and now I prefer Ravel’s.
In my 40s, I found a copy in the public library of a church organ version of the piece. “Aha,” I thought. “This is the original.” Wrong again. It was an interesting version, but not as intense as Ravel’s version.
More recently, I’ve been exploring all sorts of interpretations of Pictures courtesy of music streaming apps. I came across an actual piano version of it. Like the organ version, it’s interesting, but I prefer the orchestral version.
I looked up Pictures in Wikipedia – Pictures_at_an_Exhibition and got a few surprises. That’s where I found that the original was for piano, not organ. Ravel’s is not the only orchestration. It looks like composers were putting together all sorts of different combinations of sections of the original. There is also talk of how Ravel’s version perpetuated some early printing errors and other folks want to correct and reinterpret them. There’s also a heavy metal version of Paintings by a German band called Mekong Delta – it was way better than I expected.
The Emerson, Lake, and Palmer version
I recently gave the ELP version a couple more listens.
It’s got some sections which are just a bunch of banging and crashing. To me, it’s just cacophonous. (from the Greek: sounds like sh1t). I never enjoyed those.
They added some lyrics. They’re pretty trite and awful. Now and again, Lake will get a bit shouty for emphasis, but it’s just cringey for me.
Their version of “The Hut of Baba Yaga” is ducking amazing. It’s all action packed and bombastic and exciting as heck. Kirk is really kicking ass and taking names.
“The Gate of Kiev” is also worthwhile, despite having added vocals.
To summarize, listen to “The Hut of Baba Yaga” and “The Gate of Kiev”, pass on the rest.
The Mekong Delta version
Dude!
This is pretty faithful to the Ravel version, except for more squealing, distorted electric guitars. They’ve got 2 versions on the album – one is just the metal band themselves and the other is the metal band with an orchestra.
I sorta like heavy metal but I rarely go out of my to listen to it or follow heavy metal bands. IDK. Maybe it’s “too much”?
I like this version anyway. It could be that I’ll change my mind once the novelty wears off,
Stephen Squire 