Pictures at an Exhibition was written by Mussorgsky as a tribute to his close friend and contemporary, architect Viktor Hartmann. The original suite for piano describes the drawings which most impressed him from among some 400 displayed in a memorial exhibition for Hartmann who died of an aneurysm at the age of 39. The pictures are introduced and often interspersed with thematically recurring “promenades”.

Promenade depicts the composer, amid a crowd of visitors, looking around for the most attractive exhibits. It represents variations on a theme of very outspoken Russian characters which are continued in the ensuing promenades.

Gnomus — A design for a nutcracker with huge jaws, in the form of a dwarf clumsily running on crooked legs.

The Old Castle — Watercolor of an Italian castle at night with a troubadour singing in front of it.

The Tuileries — An avenue in the public park and garden in Paris swarming with children and nurses.

Bydlo — A lumbering Polish oxcart approaching, then receding into the horizon.

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks — Drawing from ballet Trilby .

Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle — Drawing of a beggar wheedling a rich man on a street corner in a Polish ghetto.

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was born into wealth in Russia. He began piano lessons at the age of six from his mother. At military school he learned to improvise on the piano and, it is thought, to drink. One of “The Five"”group of nationalist Russian composers, he was an innovator who strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, writing in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. He succumbed to alcoholism at the age of 42.

Dr. Mark Hindsley (1905-1999), distinguished longtime Director of Bands at the University of Illinois, transcribed this work for symphonic band.