MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition Songs and Dances of Death • The Nursery (Orchestrated by Peter Breiner) New Zealand Peter Breiner Symphony Orchestra Modest Petrovich MUSSORGSKY (1839-1881) Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Peter Breiner) 1 Promenade . 2:04 Modest Mussorgsky 2 No. 1 Gnomus . 3:24 orch. Peter Breiner 3 Promenade . 1:17 4 No. 2 Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle) . 4:36 Pictures at an Exhibition 5 Promenade . 0:37 Songs and Dances of Death 6 No. 3 Tuileries . 1:03 The Nursery 7 No. 4 Bydlo . 3:33 8 Promenade . 1:01 8.573016 9 No. 5 Ballet de poussins dans leurs coques. 1:17 (Ballet of the Chickens in Their Shells) 0 No. 6 Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle. 2:43 ! Promenade . 1:46 @ No. 7 Limoges, le marché (Limoges, the Market) . 1:36 # No. 8 Catacombae . 2:21 $ Cum mortuis in lingua morta. 2:15 (With the Dead in the Language of the Dead) % No. 9 La cabane sur des pattes de poule. 3:39 (The Hut on Fowl’s Legs) ^ No. 10 La grande porte de Kiev (The Great Gate of Kiev). 7:14 Songs and Dances of Death (Pesni i piyaski smerti) (orch. Peter Breiner) & Lullaby (Kolïbel’naya) . 3:39 * Serenade (Serenada). 4:27 ( Trepak . 5:05 ) The Field Marshal (Polkovodets). 5:28 The Nursery (Detskaya) (orch. Peter Breiner) ¡ With Nurse (S nyaney). 3:34 Producer Wayne Laird ™ In the Corner (V uglu) . 1:48 Engineer Paul McGlashan £ The Beetle (Zhuk) . 3:43 Recorded at the Michael Fowler Centre, ¢ With the Doll (S kukloy) . 1:41 Wellington, New Zealand, ∞ Going to Sleep (Na son gryadushchiy) . 2:08 7-9 February, 2012 § The Cat Sailor (Kot Matros). 2:23 Cover Photo © Natalia Bratslavsky/ ¶ On the Hobby Horse (Poyekal na palochke) . 3:46 iStockphoto.com Total Time: . 78:23 –2– 3 8.573016 Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881) nature of Mussorgsky’s originality and genius has become Pictures at an Exhibition • Songs and Dances of more widely understood and appreciated. Pictures at an Exhibition was written in 1874 as a set of piano Death • The Nursery (orchestrated by Peter Breiner) pieces, a translation into music of paintings, designs, models and drawings by Mussorgsky’s friend Victor Hartmann, who had Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was born in 1839, the fourth son died the year before. These piano pieces have been orchestrated Modest Mussorgsky of a land-owner. As a young offi cer he had musical ambitions by various composers, with the version by Maurice Ravel and, without any training in composition, tried his hand at an probably the best known. Peter Breiner has here orchestrated orch. Peter Breiner opera and less demanding compositions for the entertainment the pieces for an orchestra of piccolo, three fl utes, alto fl ute, four of his friends. It was a meeting with the nationalist composer oboes, cor anglais, four clarinets, bass clarinet, four bassoons, Pictures at an Exhibition César Cui, an expert in military fortifi cation, and with the contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, four trombones, tuba, Songs and Dances of Death composer Dargomïzhsky, that led him to a more infl uential timpani, and six percussion players, with bass drum, snare drum, connection with Balakirev, self-appointed leader of the cymbals, tam-tam, anvil, temple blocks, cabassa, tambourine, The Nursery nationalists, and their polymath mentor, the immensely tubular bells, glockenspiel, xylophone, marimba, and vibraphone. infl uential Vladimir Stasov, Mussorgsky’s fi rst biographer. It is The orchestra used also has piano, harp and celeste, with a string 8.573016 of some interest to notice that Stasov at fi rst found little good section of sixty players. to say of Mussorgsky, whom he found lacking in ideas and a The exhibits are linked by a Promenade, as the visitor to the complete idiot, a judgement in which Balakirev concurred at exhibition goes from exhibit to exhibit. The titles of the works the time and over the following years. Mussorgsky resigned his are largely self-explanatory. Gnomus is a design for nutcrackers commission in the army in 1858. Following the emancipation in the shape of a gnome; The Old Castle shows a troubadour of the serfs of 1861, which brought fi nancial consequences for singing outside the castle walls and the Tuileries depicts children land-owners, Mussorgsky in 1863 took a position as a clerk in at play and quarrelling, while nursemaids gossip, in the famous the Ministry of Communications, and continued intermittently Paris gardens. Bydlo is a traditional Polish peasant ox-cart, in government employment. It was from this time onwards with its creaking wooden wheels slowly turning; Ballet of the that he developed his own highly original musical ideas and Chickens in their Shells shows designs for children’s costumes, language, and his deep interest in the people and history as described in the title, and Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle, of Russia. In 1867 he left the civil service and attempted to the names of those portrayed being apparently the invention of earn a living from music, as a teacher and accompanist, but the composer, is a picture of two Jews, one rich, one poor, a the following year he sought to solve his fi nancial diffi culties present by Hartmann to the composer. In Limoges market-place by taking a position in the government Forestry Department. old women gossip, discussing the fate of an escaped cow, and Perhaps his greatest musical success came in 1874 with the more trivial nonsense, while the Roman Catacombs, subtitled performance of his historical opera Boris Godunov, a work to Sepulchrum Romanum, are lit by a fl ickering lamp, the skulls which critics, however, took general exception. His bouts of piled on either side beginning to glow in the light from within. drinking fi nally forced him to abandon government service in This is linked to the eerie With the Dead in the Language of the 1880, after attempts by friends to protect his position. Others Dead. The macabre continues with The Hut on Fowl’s Legs, a now offered him support, hoping that he might complete his clock in the form of the hut of the witch Baba Yaga, who crunches operas Sorochintsy Fair and Khovanshchina, two tasks that, up children’s bones and fl ies through the night on a pestle. The in the circumstances, were beyond him. He died in March the impressive conclusion offers a design for a triumphal gate in following year, his death the result of epilepsy, induced by Kiev, to commemorate the escape of Tsar Alexander II from alcoholism. He left much unfi nished, to be revised and edited assassination in 1866. The music contrasts the massive structure by his colleague Rimsky-Korsakov, from whom Balakirev had with the sound of a solemn procession of chanting monks. recently advised him to take lessons in harmony. Rimsky- Mussorgsky wrote songs throughout his life, the fi rst at the Korsakov, who had acquired his musical skills largely as an age of nineteen and the last in 1879. Pesni i piyaski smerti (Songs adult, after earlier service as a naval offi cer, was to revise and Dances of Death) date from 1875, with the fourth song written and fi nish some of the works that Mussorgsky had failed to in 1877. Based on a suggestion from Stasov and with texts by complete, and to perform the same service for the nationalist Arseny Golenischchev-Kutuzov, the songs refl ect encounters composer Borodin, introducing an element of musical with death. In the fi rst, Kolïbel’naya (Lullaby), dedicated to the sophistication that has not always proved welcome, as the veteran singer Anna Vorobyeva-Petrova, Death lulls to fi nal sleep 8.573016 4 –3– a child, dying in his mother’s arms, and in the second, Serenada, rejects these accusations, claiming to have been good, while dedicated to Glinka’s sister, Death serenades a dying girl, claiming Nanny is being horrible. The song, with the following three of the her as his own. In Trepak, dedicated to the bass Osip Petrov, series, was written in 1870. It is dedicated to Victor Hartmann. Death dances with a drunken peasant, lured to die in the ice Zhuk (The Beetle), dedicated to Vladimir Stasov, has the boy and snow. The fourth song, Polkovodets (The Field Marshal), telling Nanny about a beetle that appeared while he was playing dedicated to Kutuzov, presents a scene of battle, after which and fl ew into him, and now lies on its back hardly moving; he Modest Mussorgsky Death surveys the fi eld, having conquered all. Peter Breiner’s puzzles over what has happened to it. S kukloy (With the Doll), orchestral arrangement of the songs is scored for two fl utes with dedicated to his niece and nephew Tanyushka and Goga, children orch. Peter Breiner piccolo, two oboes with cor anglais, two clarinets and a bass of his brother Filaret, has the child, presumably a litle girl, lulling clarinet, two bassoons and a contrabassoon, four horns, three a doll to sleep, with threats of bogeymen and speculation about Pictures at an Exhibition trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, cymbals, the fi ne land of dreams. Na son gryadushchiy (Going to Sleep) is Songs and Dances of Death bass drum, triangle, tubular bells, glockenspiel, xylophone, harp, dedicated to his godson, César Cui’s child Sasha. The little girl celesta, piano and a string section of fi fty players. says her prayers, listing all those to be remembered, corrected The Nursery For his orchestral arrangement of The Nursery Peter Breiner fi nally to include herself, a sinner, to Nanny’s fi nal approval.