The MSO performs music of American composer Gunther Schuller and Russian Modest Mussorgsky in a synergistic program bridging the worlds of symphonic music and visual art. Works by Swiss artist Paul Klee inspired Schuller to write his Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee in 1959 on a commission from the Minneapolis Symphony and conductor Antal Dorati. Mussorgsky created Pictures at an Exhibition in twenty days in 1874 as a suite of ten pieces for solo piano, linked by a recurring Promenade theme. He wrote the music after attending a memorial exhibition of more than 400 works by artist Viktor Hartmann, his close friend, who died suddenly the previous year at the age of 39. Frenchman Maurice Ravel’s arrangement, commissioned by conductor Serge Koussevitsky in 1922, is the best known of the more than 25 orchestral transcriptions of Pictures made over the past 130 years.
Gunther Schuller – Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee
Modest Mussorgsky/Maurice Ravel – Pictures at an Exhibition
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