Pictures at an Exhibition in Boulder - not what you expect

[miketuba]

Hi all,

This Saturday (October 13) at 7:30 pm in Macky Auditorium on the CU campus in Boulder Colorado -

Boulder Philharmonic

Respighi - Bottecelli Pictures
Strauss - Death and Transfiguration
Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition

This is a world premier performance of a new orchestration of Pictures by yours truly.

Bydlo is played by the entire horn section.

The tuba part is still very fun without the migraine. Less French - more Russian.

Cheers -

[TubaRay]

Bydlo is played by the entire horn section.

Doesn't this constitute sacrilege?

[miketuba]

Only if the solo (as written by Ravel) is a holy thing.

[windshieldbug]

Doesn't this constitute sacrilege?

Only if played by violas, sorry

[Steve Marcus]

Is there any piano piece that has had more published orchestrations than Pictures?

[miketuba]

I thought a few might appreciate reading the notes I wrote for the program:

There have been many attempts to orchestrate Mussorgsky’s epic 1874 piano score, Pictures at an Exhibition – with varying degrees of success. Some might well consider it the height of hubris to make a new effort in light of the brilliant and virtuosic 1922 perspective by French composer Maurice Ravel (commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky and premiered in Paris on October 19 of that year). In fact, in my experience it is nearly impossible to discuss Mussorgsky’s composition without Ravel being mentioned.

Perhaps musicians talk so much about the Ravel orchestration because it is oft performed and recorded, and is arguably the best currently available version. It is, after all, one of the top ten orchestral war horses. Other versions by Leopold Stokowski (who was fond of ‘re-composing’), Lucien Cailliet, Sergei Gorchakov, and more recently, Vladimir Ashkenazy suffer to some extent from trying very hard to not sound like the Ravel version. Earlier ‘pre-Ravel’ versions by Sir Henry Wood and Mikhail Tushmalov are incomplete and hard to come by and like the Ravel, used an early edition of the piano score with its errors and omissions as source material. It wasn’t until 1931 – nine years after Ravel completed his orchestration – that the first scholarly and corrected version of the piano score was published.

Still, one could make the case that it is ultimately Mussorgsky’s music and not necessarily the orchestration that causes such a stir among audiences – though a bad orchestration would certainly detract from the composer’s intent.

My first experience with Mussorgsky’s piano score occurred when I was relatively young. Never one to shrink from a challenge and inspired by Elgar Howarth’s excellent transcription for the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble in 1977 (this was one of the first LP’s my parents gave to me when my interest in the tuba became much more than a passing fancy), I first transcribed the entire work for brass quintet while still in high school. This undertaking was admittedly and in a word, absurd. Though it was never performed in public (sadly? fortunately?), it was an excellent exercise for mind and ears. That seminal experience only whet my appetite for future orchestration projects.

Some 20 years later, with over 200 orchestrations in my portfolio and having scored 50 + minutes of a CD for Cleveland’s Burning River Brass in 1998 (Of Knights and Castles – Dorian Records xCD 90277), I was asked by that same group to make a version of Pictures at an Exhibition for them which was subsequently recorded in 2001 (Russian Carnival – Dorian xCD 90293) to some critical acclaim.

In the spring of 2006, I began to look more closely at Ravel’s remarkable score, wondering all the time if there was even room for improvement - or at least a fresh take. Several observations about this most performed and recorded version started me down a path, the ultimate destination of which you will hear for the first time tonight.

Ravel’s version is scored in a very French way (ask me over a beer, if you have the time). It is written for a very large orchestra with many extra musicians required – two piccolos, two harps, celeste, saxophone (a French idea that never really caught on except with a few Russians and one notable Englishman), five percussionists and timpani. None of this is a bad thing, but any orchestra manager will tell you that the instrumentation alone makes the decision to perform the Ravel version expensive and will give them pause for thought. This is not even to mention the large rental fee charged by the publisher.

He had at his disposal the English horn, contra bassoon, and bass clarinet but curiously did not really use them as he did in his other orchestra works. The solo in the Bydlo movement was written for the French C tuba. This all but extinct instrument is more akin to the modern euphonium (or tenor tuba) than the large orchestral instruments used by most players today. A tuba player from one of the top American orchestras has translated the Polish word Bydlo as migraine – with tongue in cheek, of course.

Ravel did not score the fifth promenade movement, ostensibly because the piano score from which he worked did not include this movement. In fact, Ravel’s source material also contained a number of harmonic and melodic errors – all working beautifully in the French master’s hands, but are nevertheless unfaithful to Mussorgsky’s original version.

This new version, written especially for the Boulder Philharmonic and receiving its premier this evening, employs the standard symphony orchestra instrumentation and the premise of a scholarly version of Mussorgsky’s piano score. Throughout the entire work, I have strived to create a more sonorous and Russian sound in the way the strings and the woodwinds are scored – more akin to the way Tchaikowsky used his orchestra. I have used the ‘underdog’ instruments in the orchestra more prominently – the low woodwind instruments are called upon to depict the Gnome, the English horn has the spotlight in the Old Castle with commentary from the principal cello. The bass clarinetist may tell you that her part is more interesting, as will the harpist and maybe the timpanist. The violas will rejoice at the number of melodies in their part. You will not hear the tuba player lament that he does not play the ox cart solo.

You may be surprised to hear the fifth promenade between Samuel Goldenburg and Schmuyle and the Market at Limoges. While this fifth promenade (which has been left out of many previous versions for reasons good and bad) is melodically and harmonically very similar to the first promenade, it is structurally important to the entire work. It marks the half way point and serves as an effective segue into the next movement. I have, however, scored it differently to set it off from the first promenade and to better set the tone for the Market.

Nevertheless, some of this will sound familiar. After all, it should be the primary concern of any orchestrator to preserve the original intent of the composer – with some skill and thoughtful scholarship, an orchestration can serve to enhance. Many color choices made by my predecessors (and, therefore, teachers) were just good, solid, and obvious ones. Can you imagine Pictures at an Exhibition with any instrument other than a solo trumpet boldly introducing the opening Promenade? I couldn’t.