Mussorgsky declared, in his early works, love for “everything Russian” and for “life as it is truly lived”. Mussorgsky’s brand of nationalism was intensely realistic, and his thematic draws on historic or social events. Nevertheless, his complex personality equated “life as it is truly lived” to abnormality, to a certain degree. That became a source of unimaginable moral pain and an obstacle to the consolidation of his work.
Conviction that conventional forms and true content were opposites generated a never-ending struggle to finish his works; many of his most ambitious projects were left unfinished at his death. The notable exceptions are some songs, the opera Boris Godunov, Night on Bald Mountain and his most famous piano piece, Pictures at an Exhibition. Even then, his circle of closer friends considered his music technically deficient and produced cleaned-up versions; his rugged, unique original versions only came to light later in the 20th century.
Mussorgsky was born in 1839 into a well-to-do, land-owning family of military tradition. He learned the piano with his mother and entered military school at 13. While music remained important to him, he took interest in history and German philosophy. It was there that he probably contracted the habit of alcoholism, too. At 17, he met fellow composer Alexander Borodin; that led to friendship with Dargomyzhsky and Balakirev, both prominent composers. Balakirev instructed Mussorgsky in composition and modern music. At 19, he decommissioned in the attempt to devote himself solely to music.
While a formative visit to Moscow made him aware of a Russia he didn’t know, he also underwent the first of many mental crises, often of a mystical nature. Mussorgsky is a true child of his time as depicted in Russian literature, where even educated people were prone to morbid thoughts, fascinated by extreme behavior and debasement and attracted to superstition or to the supernatural. In Saint Petersburg he worked as a low-grade civil servant. In his early 30’s, he reached the peak of his career with the opera Boris Godunov. This was followed by a gradual decline, when he found it increasingly difficult to finish his works and struggled with alcoholism to the point he was permanently dismissed from public service and came close to becoming a beggar. He died at 42 of a massive heart failure; his most famous portrait, with a sorry appearance, was painted by Repin a couple of weeks before his death.
Mussorgsky and architect Viktor Hartmann had a strong artistic and personal affinity, which may have developed into a personal relationship. Hartmann was a rather unorthodox artist, notoriously bad to fulfill ordinary commissions, but capable of great creativity when his fantasy was allowed to blossom. He died suddenly in 1873 at 39, leaving Mussorgsky to quote King Lear: “why should a dog, a horse, a rat live on when creatures like Hartmann must die?”. An exhibition of some 400 of his paintings and drawings was organized the following year, what inspired Mussorgsky to write the suite for piano, Pictures at an Exhibition. Atypically, it was written in only three weeks, painlessly and without interruptions. Many of those pictures were produced during Hartmann’s travels around Europe and have been lost since; the remaining ones are more notable for their brilliant content than their artistic standard.
Mussorgsky walks us to the exhibition, with a recurring, metrically lopsided Promenade – maybe trying to tell us how grand and assured a drunkard’s walk can be. This will appear from time to time, providing a transition between highly contrasting scenes. Those drag us to a vivid, claustrophobic, hallucinating and morbid world, inspired by Hartmann’s pictures. It starts with Gnomus, whose picture does not survive; it was rather a caricature in the form of a design for a nutcracker. Accordingly, highly chromatic and disjointed music leaps grotesquely and unpredictably. Another promenade takes us to Il Vecchio Castelo, and old Neapolitan castle, with a troubadour nearby to suggest scale. Mussorgsky’s interpretation is a melody of distinctly Russian flavor set over an immemorial Siciliano rhythm. He progresses through the exhibition staring at Tuilleries. That depicted an avenue in the Parisian gardens, with a swarm of quarreling children and their nurses. Mussorgsky, who was particularly attuned to the universe of children, wrote music that seems to mock the na-na-like pranking. He moves with no transition to Bydlo, a Polish ox-cart plodding along with heroic regularity until it recedes in distance. This is precisely the kind of music that has generated an aural idea of Russia worldwide. A short, reflective version of promenade walks us to the next picture, Ballet of the Chicks in their Eggshells, a surviving design sketch for ballet costumes representing canary chicks in an armor-like eggshell. Again, the composer traverses with aplomb the child-like territory in a finely distorted ornamental style.
It cuts in cinematographic fashion to Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle, two pictures owned by Mussorgsky (Schmuÿle is the Yiddish version of Samuel), described by Stasov as “two Polish Jews, rich and poor”. Two strongly characterized ideas, one based on the Phrygian mode with an augmented 2nd to evoke traditional Jewish music and depict power and wealth, while a stuttering figure represents the begging poor man. A reenactment of the original promenade leads us to the Market in Limoges (The Great News), an agile scherzo describing a market quarrel in the French countryside. Mussorgsky wrote a note saying the important news was a gentleman recovering his cow, along with someone with new dentures.
At this point, the music has a sharp plot twist. Hartmann takes us to the Catacombs and Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua (With the Dead in a Dead Language). In two distinct blocks, Mussorgsky also displaces his listeners. Formerly a linking device, the Promenade theme is woven into this movement’s fabric, bringing the listener to the inside of the picture and descending with the creative spirit of Hartmann to the catacombs in Rome, among the glowing skulls by the faint light of a lantern. That vanishes into the clouds of antiquity to be violently stricken by the start of The Hut of Baba Yaga. This is Hartmann’s most interesting picture, a design for a clock in the form of a witch’s hut on hen’s legs. It is also some of the most disturbing music of the 19th century; it appears to be atonal for a long while, with brutal intervals of 7th evoking clock bells and leading the listener to a persecutory atmosphere. It drives furiously towards the final movement, The Heroes’ Gate (in the Old Capital of Kiev). Hartmann considered this to be his best work, a grand design for gates to be placed in the capital Ukrainian city of Kiev, celebrating the escape of the Tsar Alexander II from an attempt of assassination. Hartmann won a national competition for the project, but the gates were never built. Once the listener has been brought into the picture, Mussorgsky creates a scintillating vision of glory, amplifying Baba Yaga’s bells to gigantic proportions and transforming the promenade into a solemn chorale. The last three movements in tandem create a deeply satisfying form, mirroring the first three movements in symmetrical fashion.
Mussorgsky played the suite for friends; some supporters displayed enthusiasm, but his fellow composers received the piece with bewilderment. He felt he had gone too far and did not even attempt to publish it, focusing instead on a new opera. It was published five years after his death and only started to achieve some popularity after it was orchestrated by Ravel in 1922. The impression of a rugged, deformed and somehow inconclusive piece stuck even to Mussorgsky’s friends. Its intense rawness translates as a kind of experimental ground. That, along with Ravel’s successful orchestration, has led to a profusion of transcriptions and orchestrations, ranging from large bands to solo guitar. In contrast to the composer’s facility, the performers on this recording have taken many years to produce this splendid two-guitar version. They have experimented with various bass tunings to preserve the depth of the original’s low register and its lugubrious effects. That also applies to the most appropriate keys for each piece and their suitability for the guitar. Most of all, there is an attempt to preserve the hieratic quality of the original with appropriate guitar figurations, a difficult task when much of Ravel’s orchestration interferes with our aural picture of the work. The end-result is a work of love and deep respect for Mussorgsky’s music.
Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015) is one of the most prominent Scottish composers, with a career spanning five successful decades punctuated by prestigious commissions from performers like Yehudi Menuhin, and teaching appointments. His music reflects his power to recreate the music of other composers as a transcriber and his deep knowledge of folk traditions. Thus, he traversed the 20th century making music that has a strong fingerprint and explores new territories while it retains recognizable melodic content. That is true for his large guitar duet cycle, Don Quixote & Sancho Panza, composed in 1982-83. As one would expect, it contains descriptive elements in 17 interlinked movements, but the illustrative character does not overwhelm a sense of formal cohesion, with recurring motives that return every now and again. Their character is quite varied, ranging from the mock-pensive of Quixote’s and Sancho’s reflections to the exciting marionette fanfares and Moorish songs. Its restrained and orderly aspect makes it an unexpected, contrasting companion to Mussorgsky’s cycle.
Fabio Zanon © 2025