Pictures At An Exhibition

Side A is the orchestra version of [i]Pictures At An Exhibition[/i]. Stereo recording. Side B (piano version) is a live recording from a concert in Sofia, Bulgaria, on February 25, 1958. Winner of a Grand Prix du Disque in 1960. This recording is in mono. The Suite consists of ten episodes, each with the title of one of Hartmann's drawings, preceded by a brief prelude, the Promenade, that acts as a connecting link to the picture. I. Gnomus. This represents a child's plaything fashioned after Hartmann's design in wood. It resembles the fames Nutcracker that Tchaikovsky described in music, the nuts being inserted in the gnome's mouth. "The gnome", writes Stassov, "accompanies his droll movements with savage shrieks." II. The Old Castle (Il Vecchio Castello). A medieval castle before which stands a troubadour. In Ravel's Orchestration, the plaintive song of the troubadour is given to the saxophone. III. Tuileries. An alley in Paris' Tuileries gardens. Children are quarreling over their games while groups of nurses look on. IV. Bydlo. An oxcart with enormous wheels rumbles down a country road. The driver sings a folk song that, in Ravel's orchestration, is given to the tuba. V. Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells. This section was inspired by sketches Hartmann made for the ballet "Trilbi", first produced at the Bolshoi Theater in 1871. The catalog for the Hartmann exhibition notes that there were canaries "enclosed in eggs as in suits of armor. Instead of a hed-dress, canary heads, put on like helmets, down to the neck." VI. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle. This is based on two sketches of Hartmann's made in a small Polish town near Warsaw. One is of a rich Jew in a fur hat, slow, comfortable and rather pompous. The other sketch is of a poor Jew, fussy, excitable and voluble. The voice of the former is represented by the lower strings, the voice of the latter by a muted trumpet. VII. Limoges, the Market Place. This depicts a furous dispute among the market women at Limoges. VIII. Catacombs.This section is in two parts: the first is subtitled "Roman Sepulchre" and is followed by "Cum mortuis in lingua mortua" (With the dead in a dead language). IX. The Hut on Fowl's Legs. Hartmann's drawing was of a fourteenth-century Russian cock in the shape of the hut of the witch Baba Yaga that stands on the legs of fowls. X. The Great Gate at Kiev. Stassov wrote of Hartmann's design for the proposed gate at Kiew thus: "Their style is that of the old heroic Russia. Columns, which support the trim arch crowned by a huge, carved headpiece, seem sunk into the earth as through weighted down by old age... Above, instead of a cupola, is a Slavic was helmet with pointed peak."