Comprehensive introduction to the work
Christoph Flamm has reappraised the background to Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" and put his own edition of the score into perspective.
It is not every day that an editor critically scrutinizes his own edition and openly admits mistakes. Three years ago, when Christoph Flamm published Mussorgsky's Pictures of an exhibition in a new edition, he had some old readings corrected on the basis of a Soviet facsimile. However, these new variants were difficult to understand and critics reacted skeptically, especially as the facsimile was barely legible in places (see also SMZ 3/2014, page 24).
In his introduction to the work, Christoph Flamm now retracts these new readings. A sympathetic move! And that's not the only thing to praise: On almost 180 pages, the booklet provides just about everything worth knowing about Mussorgsky's unique piano cycle. It starts with Viktor Hartmann, whose paintings at a memorial exhibition were the direct inspiration for the work. They cannot always be clearly assigned to Mussorgsky's subjects. (For example, the portrait of an Italian peasant was long mistaken for the poor Jew "Schmuyle"). It is about the influential art critic Vladimir Stasov, to whom Mussorgsky dedicated his work. And, of course, it is about the music itself.
This leads to interesting cross-comparisons with other Russian compositions from that time. The linguistic ambiguity of some of the headings (e.g. Bydło) is also discussed, and even old metronome markings were tracked down. These apparently come from Stassow and are at least partly astonishing (120 for the quarters in Baba-Jaga?). In addition, there are references to the reception and thus of course also to the numerous transcriptions, of which Ravel's orchestral version still remains the dominant one. Flamm makes all these interesting facts read like a thriller, and the excellent illustrations do the rest.
In short: this paperback is a must for anyone who wants to delve deeper into Mussorgsky's immortal piano cycle!
Christoph Flamm: Modest Mussorgsky. Pictures at an Exhibition - Memories of Viktor Hartmann, Bärenreiter Werkeinführungen, 178 p., € 14.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel 2016, ISBN 978-3-7618-2221-0
