As you know, you’ll soon (Thurs 10/24) be attending a performance of the New York Philharmonic, including a setting of Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Before you head there, here are a few resources related to that piece, to help you frame the experience:
1) For program notes to accompany a performance of Pictures at an Exhibition, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC put together a brief history. Among other things, they explain that the “pictures” were part of a show in memoriam of the artist Victor Hartmann, a friend of the composer, who died young. View the notes here: http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/
?fuseaction=composition&composition_id=2481.
2) Many of the images themselves have been lost, but notes were taken at the time as to what they looked like. Later historians have tried to collect what we do know and pair it with the images we still have from Hartmann. Here’s one such collection: http://korschmin.com/portfolio-view/viktor-hartmann-pictures-at-an-exhibition/. Click on the individual photos to enlarge them.
