DESCRIPTION:
These recordings are so dazzling it’s kind of hard to articulate what precisely makes them tick, but it probably comes down to two things. The first is Mussorgsky’s musical genius: a style so utterly and inimitably his own, and whose expressive power, imagistic potential, and directness is simply without obvious parallel in the Western musical canon. It takes the impressionists huge swathes of notes and detours from tonality to generate extraordinary effects, and yet Mussorgsky, using figuration considered almost revoltingly ugly at the time, does the same with a far leaner, sparser style [see Oxcart, The Old Castle]. There is also the structural cleverness of the PaaE, with Promenade (whose steady, casually disorganised rhythm imitates strolling -- I assume from one picture at the exhibition to another?) not merely recurring in modified form but actually starting to seep into the different pieces [see Tuileries, which is generated out of the figure at 0:51, Con Mortuis, Great Gate] over the course of the work.

The second is the fact that these two recordings are really transcriptions of Ravel’s orchestration of the Pictures, as the many modifications to the score will show. They are examples of modern pianism at its best – drawing on every available musical resource, and a good deal of pianistic initiative, to create interpretations bursting with colour and life. Youtube tells me that most of the time people don’t usually listen to the second interpretation in these videos, but Andsnes’ Great Gate at Kiev is really one of those once-in-a-lifetime recordings, and if you don’t listen to both his and Pletnev’s you’re really missing out on something.

Pletnev --
00:00 – Promenade I [Note bass at 1:28]
01:38 – Gnomus [Modifications at 3:26 onward, in the LH, and then in the RH – turning the piano into a fully sustaining instrument]
04:18 – Promenade II
05:14 – The Old Castle
10:32 – Promenade III
11:05 – Tuileries
12:10 – The Oxcart [The bass snarl at 13:53, and the change of timbre in the LH]
14:47 – Promenade IV
15:42 – Ballet of Chicks in their Shells [Note the lovely colours at 16:33 – Cf Andsnes in the same section]
17:10 – Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
19:43 – The Marketplace at Limoges [that little buildup in the beginning, connecting this to the preceding piece]
Promenade V excluded
21:13 – Catacombs
23:30 – Con Mortuis in Lingua Morta (Promenade VI)
25:57 – The Hut on Fowl’s Legs [for fiddly copyright reasons I had to substitute Kissin’s recording in, but this is a superb interpretation, and not that different from Pletnev’s]
29:24 – The Great Gate of Kiev (Promenade VII) [Note the beautifully muted, hazy beginning, which sounds like bells ringing from a distance, and which suddenly bursts into colour at 30:03. Also how from 32:27 Pletnev lets his LH get increasingly out of sync with the RH, which together with the hard percussiveness he generates in the LH creates an unbelievably powerful imitation of bells ringing. Also the huge sounds at 33:03, and so on.]

Andsnes --
34:45 – Promenade I
36:05 – Gnomus [Cf Pletnev’s modifications: 37:36, first in the LH, then the RH, with also the goal of creating a truly sustained sound]
38:32 – Promenade II
39:22 – The Old Castle
43:41 – Promenade III
44:12 – Tuileries [gorgeously delicate playing]
45:12 – The Oxcart [Andsnes starts soft, clearly taking his cue from Ravel]
47:46 – Promenade IV
48:29 – Ballet of Chicks in their Shells [Cf Pletnev at 49:00 – Andsnes has double trills, and the texture at 49:10 is drastically different from Pletnev’s]
49:40 – Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
51:54 – Promenade V
53:15 – The Marketplace in Limoges [Note octave displacements, scattered basically everywhere]
54:43 – Catacombs
56:44 – Con Mortuis in Lingua Morta (Promenade VI) [Note modifications to RH tremolos]
58:45 – The Hut on Fowl’s Legs [the ferocity at 1:01:10 is remarkable]
1:02:11 – The Great Gate of Kiev (Promenade VII) [the Horowitzian octave modifications at 1:03:29, the wonderfully subtle & bell-like scalar additions in the bass at 1:03:41, the sheer exuberance of 1:04:46 as the Promenade theme makes its entrance, the additional chords sounding at 1:05:11, the sustained Eb through the final page.]