Pictures at an Exhibition (Ravel original edition, complete) [Alf:36-A942601]

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) composed Pictures at an Exhibition for solo piano as a musical depiction of a tour through an exhibition of paintings by his late friend Viktor Hartman. The most commonly performed version of the piece is an orchestration by Maurice Ravel. In fact, Ravel's orchestration drew enough attention to the once-obscure piece to place it in the modern piano repertoire. Ravel based his orchestration on Rimsky-Korsakov's version of Mussorgsky's score published after Mussorgsky's death. Ravel's choices of featured instruments for color are widely admired, including a trumpet representing a peasant in "Samuel Goldenberg and Schmĵyle" and a saxophone representing a minstrel in "The Old Castle". Ravel's orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition premiered in Paris on October 19,1922. Instrumentation: 3 (2nd & 3rd d. Picc).3 (3rd d. EH).2+BCl.2+CBsn: ASax: 4.3.3.1: Timp.Perc(6). Clst.2Hp: Str (9.8.7.6.5 in set). Reprint edition. A new edition by R. Mark Rogers is also available from Edwin F. Kalmus.