On 4th April 1866, Tsar Alexander II narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the city of Kiev. To commemorate the event, a competition was held for the erection of a great gate. Entries poured in, including this drawing by Victor Hartmann.
The design caused a sensation, and the architect felt it was his finest work to date. However, the project, referred to by the Imperial Censor as ‘the event of April 4, 1866’, was eventually cancelled, possibly through lack of funds, or simply because the Tsar was uneasy at being permanently reminded of the attack on his life.
Hartmann died at the early age of 39, and his friend, the composer Modest Petrovich Moussorgsky, was inspired to reflect on some of Hartmann’s works in music. Thus Pictures at an Exhibition was born.
For these pieces Moussorgsky chose from a variety of watercolours, stage designs and architectural drawings. Only in The Catacombs does he suggest that the work was a memorial to the artist (although Baba-Yaga is the death-witch of Russian folk-lore and probably meant more to a Russian imagination).
The suite is given some coherence by the repetition of the Promenade, as if Moussorgsky was walking round the exhibition with the listener, describing his reaction in music to the colours and movement in the exhibits.
Pictures at an Exhibition is mostly known today through the arrangement made for orchestra by Ravel — perhaps the greatest orchestrator who has ever lived. However, it is in the original piano version (Ref R6627 £6.00) http://www.stainer.co.uk/acatalog/piano_moussorgsky.html that one finds the direct link between the two friends. The final piece, The Great Gate of Kiev, is as impressive on the piano as it is in Ravel’s orchestration.
