WINGATE’S ORCHESTRATION OF MUSSORGSKY’S PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

Modest Mussorgsky’s famous piano suite Kartinki s vystavki (‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, 1874) caught the composer’s attention as a child and fascinated him with its seemingly endless potential to inspire orchestral transcriptions. Later, having resolved to teach himself the craft of orchestration, he chose Mussorgsky’s piece as a kind of ultimate orchestration étude, making a series of ambitious transcriptions for large orchestra. His final version, incorporating organ and (wordless) chorus into his sonic palette, was completed in 2003.

Wingate’s transcription uses a conceptual approach that he calls ‘timbre mapping’ which seeks to organically embed tone color identities within the piece’s structure as meaningful musical events. For example, the work’s cohesionary ‘promenade’ sections are often used to instrumentally foreshadow the ‘character’ movements directly following them, giving these recurring episodes a subtle feeling of integrated architectural complexity.

The chorus in this transcription does not appear to join the proceedings until its splendid full-voiced entrance at the opening of the final movement (Bogatyrskiye vorota [V stolnom gorode vo Kiyeve], a.k.a. ‘The Grand Gate of Kiev’), but this is actually a kind of orchestrational trick played on the listener: Throughout the piece, various groups of voices from the choir are instructed to sing bocca chiusa [i.e. ‘humming’] while seated within the chorus, without giving any outward indication that they are indeed singing at all, so as to add a mysterious depth and resonance to the orchestral tone color at assorted moments across the entire piece. This also serves as a work-wide insinuated foreshadowing of the otherwise shocking choral opening of the ‘Grand Gate’. Similarly, the organ is used somewhat sparingly throughout, until the final movement where it takes on an imposing, rafter-shaking prominence, evoking the famous Maestoso moment in Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony, and contributing it’s characteristic thick pedal sound to Wingate’s ne plus ultra, cast-of-thousands approach to the work’s majestic and stirring finale.

This Pictures transcription joins a varied and illustrious company of arrangements that the piece has enjoyed since its composition in the 1870’s. The International Kartinki s Vystavki Association (IKVA) catalogs over well over two hundred transcriptions of the work, not just in symphonic dimensions, but for everything from percussion ensemble to an orchestra of accordions. All orchestral versions are indebted to some extent to Ravel’s masterful 1922 version, but Wingate’s thoughtful and finely-crafted effort sits in a unique position on this list, providing a fresh perspective and sonic grandeur to Mussorgsky’s masterwork.

Orchestration:

3 Flutes (I. & II. double Piccolo; III. doubles Piccolo & Alto Flute)

2 Oboes

English Horn

Clarinet in E-flat

2 Clarinets in B-flat

Bass Clarinet in B-flat

Bassoon

Contrabassoon

4 Horns in F

2 Flügelhorns in B-flat (both doubling rotary-valve trumpets in B-flat)

Bass Trumpet in B-flat

3 Trombones (III. doubles Contrabass Trombone)

Euphonium

Tuba (doubling Cimbasso)

Timpani

Triangle

Suspended Cymbal

Crash Cymbals

Tam-Tam

Whip

Tambourine

Snare Drum

Tenor Drum

Bass Drum

Glockenspiel

Tubular Bells

2 Harps

Celesta

Piano

Organ

Chorus (SSATB)

Strings

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