How I Discovered...MUSSORGSKY

[@mattmartinez1414]

For me I was in elementary school I believe, and I watched Fantasia. The last piece, Night on Bald Mountain, just captured my attention and imagination. The harmonies and the orchestration, so macabre, yet so beautiful. It’s forever in my mind and memory.

[@philippborghesi1060]

I was sort of a strange teenager. My first opera I ever saw was Khovanshchina in our local Theatre. I couldn‘t understand a word but the music just blew me away. The conductor was Kirill Karabits who has done a good Walton Symphonies CD with the Bournemouth Symphony.

[@bbailey7818]

​@@ColonelFredPuntridge I especially like the Shostakovich orchestration with Stravinsky's more tragic, bleak ending.

[@bjornjagerlund3793]

@@ColonelFredPuntridge My favorite opera.

[@robertjewell9727]

The first time I heard Pictures was as a 7th grader and Mrs. Leigh who was our on-call substitute teacher who subbed for any sort of subject decided one day to take us to our wee auditorium which was just a large flat room with folding chairs and give us some music history lessons and she started with the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra and then played Ravel's orchestral version of Pictures and we were all mesmerized. I wish I could recall the Orchestra and conductor she'd chosen, but we did have a small classical music record library where I afterwardmrd discovered Vaughn Williams so my ears owe Mrs. Leigh a lot.

[@michaelpdawson]

Another rock kid introduced to Pictures at an Exhibition by Emerson, Lake & Palmer here. A few months later I was ready to dive into the real thing, and the first two “real” classical albums I bought were the Ormandy/Philadelphia Pictures (with the paint-smeared palette cover) and the Monteux/Boston recording of Tchaikovsky’s 6th on Victrola. I was also directed to the latter by Keith Emerson, having heard the Nice’s version of the third movement.

[@anttivirolainen8223]

I have my mom to thank for introducing to me to Mussorgsky. My first encounter with the composer was - like for so many of us probably - Pictures at an Exhibition. About at the age of 12 or 13 I had begun to show interest in classical music, particularly Beethoven. My mom strongly encouraged this new hobby of mine. I started by listening her record collection and every now and then my mom bought me a surprise cd on her way home from work. One time in the very early stage of my encounter with classical music she had bought me Pictures at an Exhibition, the recording by Charles Dutoit and Orchestre Symphonique Montreal on Decca. I was immediately stunned by the work and that disc pretty much became my soundtrack for summer 1998. Mussorgsky was an absolute master in describing characters and situations through his music. Ravel's orchestration is not just an excessively neutral instrumentation (like those orchestrations that try to create a more "faithful" adaptation of the work), but Ravel uses the instrumentation brilliantly to highlight those different characters and bring even more psychological depth to Mussorgsky's work.

[@melodymaker135]

And thank you Dave for your joy and unpretentious enthusiasm. Raw joy and sophistication aren’t opposed to each other - I say they’re siblings

[@HassoBenSoba]

Fall, 1962..."Night on Bald Mountain" from the old Disney "Fantasia" LP set that had been lying around the house. Fall, '64...our grade school music teacher (using an old mono phonograph) plays the Horowitz piano version of "Baba Yaga" and "Great Gate" for the class, then follows it with the orchestral version (not sure which recording). My dad was a well-known Chicago radio guy and was able to get us promotional copies of classical recordings for free; I asked, and he brought home the Bernstein/NY recording of Pictures. The next summer I got hold of the piano version (Bauer edition), and learned Baba and Great Gate for the annual state school piano competition. Somehow, I made it through the performance. Then my dad brought home the Stokowski Phase 4 version. Quite a trip. And so on... LR

[@markzacek237]

I wish I could recapture the excitement I felt as an impressionable teenager, discovering the great masterpieces of music, masterpiece by masterpiece. My mom said I’d like Pictures at an Exhibition and so I bought the Kubelik/CSO performance on a cheapie Mercury Wing LP, “electronically processed for stereo.” The second the needle touched the noisy groove of the opening Promenade, I was transfixed. The tune resonated with me in a visceral way. I had to sit down. I scarcely breathed for the rest of the performance. I wish I could still feel the thrill of the first time I heard La Boheme, The Nutcracker, the Hebrides, Der Freischutz…

[@1-JBL]

Got the Emerson Lake and Palmer version of it. Then the Isao Tomita synthesizer version. FINALLY a recording of the Ravel orchestration. Took about 6 years to get there.

[@dubravkosimag2860]

I've been going down the same road!

[@dmntuba]

What found musical memories from my youth. For me it was 1978 hearing a (cut to hell) marching band arrangement of Night on Bald Mountain. After being blown away I got my hands on Fiddler and the Boston Pops and soon after Reiner Chicago doing Pictures...Good Stuff 👍

[@zdl1965]

Baba Yaga's Hut in the original piano version, played by Rudolf Firkusny in a DG LP appropriately called Russian Rousers. That got me hooked on his music!

[@herbchilds1512]

The New York Philharmonic actually came to my small town. (It's a college town, which helps.) This would have been 1954 or 55. I forget who conducted, Cantelli or Schippers. They played Pictures (Ravel, of course.) To my 14 year old ears, it was a full-blown revolution. I had known Bald Mountain from the Fantasia version.

[@leestamm3187]

As a single digit kid, I saw the 1956, mixed screen format release of "Fantasia" which featured "Night on Bald Mountain." It was kind of scary (not unlike Mussorgsky himself) but it was how I discovered him. Later came the Ormandy "Pictures at an Exhibition" which is great, I agree, even if he hustles the ox cart a bit too fast. Maazel's with The Cleveland Orchestra is my personal fave PAAE.

[@Craig_Wheeler]

First time was 1971 at the Arcadia Public Library, in the listening area, to the Mehta/LAPO coupled with Ashkenazy playing the piano original. The title of the piece and the cool album cover caught my eye and I have been glad they did ever since.

[@joewebb1983]

Ditto! My first proper introduction to classical music, outside of hearing things on cartoons and collecting magazines that came with cassettes with things like Peer Gynt, The Planets etc, was Pictures. Funnily enough it was the piano version! I learned the Hut and Great Gate for my final music performance exam at the end of senior school. Earl Wild's version was the one I first heard and since then over 25years later, no other piano version has surpassed it imho! My first orchestral version was when I bought a Philips disc of Brendel playing the piano version (what I bought the CD for) it was coupled with Previn's VPO version. After that I was obsessed and bought as many versions as I could afford!

[@johnwright7557]

My first memory of Mussorgsky was also Pictures. I used to shop at an appliance/electronics store that also sold Mercury LPs during. my high school years. When I saw the sleeve with the reproduction of Repin’s painting of the drunken composer, I had to have the LP! It was Kubelik’s recording with the CSO and it blew me away. I have never heard a better one, though I have several on CD.

[@carlconnor5173]

I think Mussorgsky wrote Pictures with the intent to orchestrate it and just didn’t get around to it. Yes, Ravel’s orchestration is indeed one of the most amazing marvels in all Classical repertoire.

[@timyork6150]

My discovery of Mussorgsky came in my very early collecting days because of hi-fi curiosity. It was Pictures of course. The first Mercury recording I recall reading about was Kubelik and Chicago playing Pictures and the brilliant clarity and balance of the recording were praised to the skies. I was duly impressed and also came to love the music. Somewhere along the line I seem to have lost that disc which was a 10 inch LP on the HMV label in the UK. I don't seem to have developed my knowledge of Mussorgsky very much w just 3 recordings of Pictures on my shelves + one Boris and one Khovanschina. I wonder why this neglect. I find his music very powerful and striking, especially Boris in the original orchestration.

[@f.scottwalters7349]

Kubelik/CSO recording of "Pictures," in my early teens. Absorbing and thrilling. Shortly after that was in a multi-high school festival orchestra, where we did "Night on Bald Mountain." Good times.

[@bjornjagerlund3793]

For me, it was Emerson, Lake and Palmer playing their version of Pictures at an exhibition, long before I started listening to classical music.

[@RenMan522]

Pictures, specifically Ormandy's Philadelphia version, blew me away. When "Bydlo" began, I was stupefied by its evocation of a massive, oxen-pulled cart making its way over a rough road (or was it through a muddy street in a village or town?). Anyway, the depiction of the rich and poor Jews also left me speechless. Then, as a finale, "The Great Gate Of Kiev"!! Stunning music, brilliantly executed! Bravo to EO and the Philadelphia Orchestra and to you for bringing back my first memory of hearing this particular recording!! Thank you!

[@heatherharrison264]

My answer to most of these "How I Discovered..." videos is one of two things - either the music was in the cultural background and I gradually became aware of it, or I randomly found records back when I used to haunt the record stores and thrift stores. This is one of the rare occasions when I can point to something more specific, and it is perhaps the most important "How I Discovered..." of my entire history of listening to classical music. When I was a child, my mother had a small accumulation of records, most of which were popular music, but there were a few classical ones. One was an RCA Victor Red Seal record entitled "The Power of the Orchestra." It featured the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by René Leibowitz performing the Leibowitz arrangement of "Night on Bald Mountain" and the Ravel orchestration of "Pictures at an Exhibition." More than any other record in that accumulation, this one fascinated me, and I thoroughly imprinted on it to the point that the Rimsky-Korsakov arrangement of "Night on Bald Mountain" always sounds a little weird to me. I played that record many times until it finally wore out. Unfortunately, it turns out that it was a limited record club release, and it took me a long time and a lot of money to find a replacement. I guess I'm not the only one who appreciates this record - it is something of a cult classic. Over the years, I know it had some limited CD reissues, but they were even harder to get than the original record, and I never found one. Digital downloads never came up either - until just now. I decided to check Presto to see if, by some miracle, it had finally turned up, and it has. There is a download-only Urania small box set entitled "Conductor Profiles: René Leibowitz." Both Mussorgsky pieces are buried within it, and it looks like there is some other good stuff. (I wonder if it has been there for a while, but I didn't find it because it is buried and only came up when I thought to use certain keywords in the search.) I think I'll have to buy it (along with the Sanderling Shostakovich cycle that Dave recently reviewed). Hopefully, it has been remastered properly. This was my introduction to Mussorgsky, and it was a lot more. Along with a Columbia record entitled "Bach's Greatest Hits," which I also spent a fair amount of time with, it was my introduction to classical music. These pieces are great for children who are just starting to learn about music since they readily stimulate a child's creative imagination. Listening to this music and constructing stories about it is an endlessly entertaining activity.

[@richardsandmeyer4431]

I first heard the Night on Bald Mountain as a child watching TV. The old 1950s-60s Sunday night Disney show would occasionally show excerpts of Fantasia including the Mussorgsky piece. I don't recall that the name Mussorgsky was even mentioned during the show though the name Stokowski certainly was. The first Mussorgsky recording in my collection was the Kubelik/CSO Pictures at an Exhibition on a super budget Mercury Wing LP (might have been in fake stereo but I don't remember for certain). That would have been in the late 1960s. By now I've got many recordings of both the orchestral version (including some not using the Ravel arrangement) and of the piano original. Also acquired a few recordings of Boris Godunov and other works by Mussorgsky along the way.

[@thebruckler3707]

There was a turn-based strategy videogame for the Xbox 360 called "Civilization Revolution". Basically you start at the stone age, develop cities, discover technology, and take your own "faction" to the modern era while competing with other civilizations. When you finish a game you're sent to this "great hall" where it shows various stats and achievements you've done in the game; and in this hall the "Promenade" from Pictures At An Exhibition plays. I remember always really liking the music but it wasn't until almost 10 years later I finally realized "what it was". It also didn't take long to realize there were way better versions out there than the recording used in the game

[@olinwilliams]

Pictures was also my intro to classical - via Emerson, Lake, and Palmer LOL

[@toastonmitchell2636]

Funnily enough, I heard about him from a book called Five Great Russian Composers. Pictures at an Exhibition was definitely my first listen, though.

[@steveschwartz8944]

My great-Uncle Morris and Aunt Ethel had a bunch of old c. 1920s & 1930s 78s, which included songs from George M. Cohan's "Little Nellie Kelly," some Caruso, comedy records ("Uncle Josh Buys an Automobile"), "Donkey Serenade" (my favorite), and Chaliapin singing Mussorgsky's "Song of the Flea." At 5 years old, I didn't distinguish one from another in terms of quality or genre. It was just music, which I liked. So although I heard Mussorgsky at a young age, I didn't really fix on him. It took the Szell recording of the Ravel Pictures to make Mussorgsky at one point my favorite 19th-century composer, since I really didn't care for the Germans beyond particular pieces - I found them blah and harmonically predictable. It was only in my mid-20s that something clicked, and I've been playing catch-up ever since. It's more than a little ridiculous to say to oneself, let alone out loud, "You know that Brahms is really pretty good after all." At any rate, I'm still a Mussorgsky headbanger. I love just about everything, including the piano original of Pictures, including its clunkiness. And it carried over to Rimsky, Borodin, and Balakirev. Coincidentally, I recently listened to the Stokowski Phase 4 version of his Mussorgsky transcriptions. The Pictures seems muddled when you compare it to Ravel and out-Herod Herod in the "Hut on Fowl's Legs." Then again, I've heard several different arrangements of single movements, including some by Rimsky and his students, and they all come up short, compared to Ravel.

[@gim12345]

Fantasia was a disney movie early available for pirate download in 2005-6 in brazil.That was my introduction to it through piracy of old Disney movies

[@melodymaker135]

Also my first classical love! School field trip, maybe 5th grade. My mom’s mono records of Ormandy Swan Lake and Bernstein Franck Symphony were prolly next. I soon found a $1.99 Odyssey that had the Szell Pictures on one side and live Richter piano version on the other. Loved the orchestral more, liked the piano. I was horrified when I discovered the Stokowski orchestration a few years later, thought it was awful 😂 Yes to Dave’s experience of wonderment! BTW, the live encounter was the ASO, probably with Robert Shaw but of course I don’t remember…

[@tom6693]

I think we're missing a real opportunity here, Dave. Every time you mention your mother and the big role she and her record collection played in your musical education, I think: what a kick it would be to hear HER side of the story. How about you tap your love of Dvorak for the title of a "Songs My Mother Taught Me" video in which the two of you talk about the handful of her favorite compositions which you learned while she was vacuuming or dusting or generally mopping up around the house? I know I'm not the only listener who'd relish that conversation. And as for Mussorgsky, chalk me up as another boomer who encountered him in that terrifying Bald Mountain episode in Fantasia. Undoes me to this day.

[@stevemcclue5759]

I blame Dad. He had the LP of Reiner's "Pictures" with the CSO, and used to play it often (and who wouldn't!), so it got into my subconscious from an early age. Then we saw/heard Solti early in his reign at the CSO when he brought them to the Proms with his new recording: "Pictures at an Exhibition." They were great. Say what you will about Solti, he knew how to whip up excitement. In some ways I'm sorry that he tamed his wilder excesses later in life. It was only when I started bashing away at piano lessons that I heard the *original* version of the suite (ie. on piano), and now I live in a weird multiverse where I hear the orchestral version when listening to the piano version, and the piano version when hearing the orchestral suite. I love them both. I need to see a shrink about all this.

[@JEduardoDElboux]

I discovered Mussorgsky by ELP's prog rock arrangement of Pictures... And I love the piece, and went to the music store to buy the original version (at that time, I bought The Ravel orchestration - only some time after that I learned that the original one was for piano, and I have return to the store and bought Richter's interpretation...)

[@olinwilliams]

See my comment!

[@vincentspinelli9995]

The Ormandy is the best........however, that Reiner/Chicago is damn close.....

[@mgconlan]

I first heard Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" when my age was in single digits, too, but it was when I was given a copy of the four-78 album of Vladimir Horowitz's recording of the original piano version, albeit "Edited by Horowitz." I still like the piano version better; in fact, in my childhood I used to drive my mother crazy playing the side with "Baba Yaga" over and over. When I finally heard Ravel's orchestration I didn't like it - and still don't; I love Mussorgsky and I love Ravel, but their sound worlds are totally different and the mix just doesn't mesh for me. Mussorgsky's masterpieces are "Pictures" and "Boris Godunov," works he DID complete and which should have been left alone instead of tweaked by others after his death.

[@bbailey7818]

I'm sure my first encounter with Mussorgsky was via Disneyland TV show when they showed Bald Mountain. Scary and fun. But I was the strange kid who first heard him otherwise on EMI, the Christoff/Cluytens recording of Boris. I immediately loved the epic quality and the avoidance of the predictable boy meets girl opera plot. I'm not a purist, either, I still love Rimsky's orchestration. But even then I looked askance at Christoff's hogging of three roles Only later did I hear Pictures, first on Victrola, the Toscanini 1953 recording (ancient, you say, but still the greatest bass drum thwacks in Baba Yaga; I think he used the giant 8' diameter drum he had for the Verdi Dies Irae); then the recording on Odyssey, Szell and the Clevelanders on one side and Richter's titanic live piano version on the flip. Boring? Hell, no! I thought it was thrilling. Still do. I've heard other orchestrations since, but Ravel overall made the best and nearly inevitable seeming choices.

[@loganfruchtman953]

Baby Einstein for me once again. Parts of the “Pictures of Exhibition” were featured in the video Baby Van Gogh (very fitting).

[@melodymaker135]

Under the video is a pic of Dave with “guidelines for this channel.” Without my glasses I thought it said “guy lives for this channel” 😂

[@RIRI-el6xm]

my little moment of intense pleasure, maybe better than sex. the tormented music of Mussorgsky (gnobuis part for exemple) and for my another sens, the paintings of the equally tormented Venetian master, Tintorto. Crazy as it is magnificent and vibrant. Always brings tears to my eyes.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

They're not better than sex. If they are, then you're doing it wrong.

[@RIRI-el6xm]

​@@DavesClassicalGuide my friend, i m french, and Normandy blood (Viking origin) (Danish are all polygam like mormon and totaly obessive for sex, and french crazy latine lover) I life in Asia in Bangkok, s3x i can have Evry time if i want (for the price of one cheesburger in your country, or luxury s3x palace you can t imagine... ), in fact i have evry day with my young wife of 24 years. A gilrl pretty, submissive, and lovely with pigtails and well heavy trained with me, know exactly what i like), I have 44, and here this does not pose a problem here. That are good, so good; lot of european man jealous me a lote. But objectively this is not so intense. Only pray in Catholic or Orthodox Church in heavy trance, when i can... or classical music, Mosorsky composition or even see tutu, and the beautiful blondes of Mariinski (Saint Petersburg) dancing accompanied by the purity and emotion of Tchaikovsky's music. when i Lisen Igor prince of borodin when i remember my training in organ to pratice Bach composition. and another great master. I"m a sexual obsession, i really like s3x, my culture and all my genetics, but in fact only faith or art, that can give me this level of emotion, to make me cray, to make me cray a lote and go in trance. S3x are good, but not at this point, sorry. In Europe of North American fault or the cancer of feminism you miss s3x, you idealize that, but in fact is not so important... just a feeling like eat or pi$s, you execute and is over. But the music of these geniuses; the decision of the great masters of painting, Italian, Flemish or French... Raphalo; Tintoreto, Michelangelo, De vinci etc The relationship you can have with religion, or art, only this transands you in your deepest soul. I m Catholic and that are not tabou like puritan protestan for we. Xd:) If you are maried, is heavy recomanded for made a lot of childrens, and the plasure are great think to give your half, a prove of love. ( no tabou for we culture) We do a lote... But definitivly... is mosorsky make my cry and dream.

[@pvonberg]

I prefer the piano version. Ha !

[@pvonberg]

Horowitz.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

As I said, someone always does.