Pictures at an Exhibition
1874
Sheet Music

Piano solo

SKU: PE.EP3727A

1874. Composed by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky. Edited by Walter Niemann. Piano (Solo). Sheet Music. Duration 00:36:00. Edition Peters #EP3727A. Published by Edition Peters (PE.EP3727A).

Solo Piano

Modest Mussogsky probably met artist and architect Viktor Hartmann in 1870. They became good friends very swiftly. When Hartmann died suddenly of an aneurism in 1873 at the age of 39, an exhibition of over 400 of his works was organized for February and March of 1874 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Mussorgsky lent works from his personal collection, and viewed the exhibition in person. He was so inspired by the experience, and had been so shaken by Hartmann's untimely death, that he composed "Pictures at an Exhibition" in six weeks. The Suite depicts the composer taking an imaginary tour of an art exhibition; each of its movements a musical picture of one of Hartmann's paintings (the interludes depict walking from painting to painting ... "My physiognomy can be seen in the interludes.", Mussourgsky wrote in a letter to a friend)

Walter Niemann (1876-1953), editor of this publication, was an arranger, music critic and a composer in his own right. He studied with Engelbert Humperdinck as a youth in Leipzig, and later entered the Leipzig Conservatory, where he was a pupil of Carl Reinecke. His compositions number 189, of which over 150 are for solio piano (chiefly character pieces, for which he is most famous)