Mussorgsky Pictures Digital Download

Praised in Gramophone magazine for his "vividly individual" release of Liszt's 'Annes de plerinage' in which he "strikes just the right balance between devotion and poetry", legendary pianist Michele Campanella returns to Odradek with an album of music by Mussorgsky and Scriabin.

Ilia Radoslavov, piano professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, performing Prokofiev and Mussorgsky.

This disc of orchestral showpieces features four of the five members of the Mighty Handful, a group of Russian composers who, during the second half of the 19th century, collaborated to create a distinct national style. The recorded works illustrate different aspects of their endeavors - both in terms of the musical means they employ and their subject matter.

Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky have been translated into other styles of music several times, and the interpretation by Emerson, Lake and Palmer is legendary. The cycle calls for rhythmic expansion. With playfulness, wit and charm, Ragna Schirmer and Matthias Daneck bring the famous picture show to the Schinkel Church in Neuhardenberg in a new way.

Jimin Oh-Havenith’s fourth album for audite is dedicated to distinctive masterpieces of Russian piano music, including Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and a selection of etudes and preludes by Scriabin and Rachmaninov.

Anna Fedorova explores the Intrigues of the Darkness in these programmatic and extremely virtuosic works for solo piano. The journey from darkness to light begins with Scriabin’s terrifying "Black Mass" Sonata. The work represents a satanic ritual that is possessed by the spectre of the Mephistophelian Liszt. De Falla’s Suite from El Amor brujo conjures a mysterious world, full of magic, rituals and ghost visitations. Ravel described his Gaspard de la nuit as "romantic and of transcendent virtuosity". These highly evocative pieces are based on Aloysius Bertrand’s prose poems depicting scenes of a hanged man sighing on the gallows and a devilish dwarf. Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition portrays many scenes of darkness but emerges into light with the Great Gate of Kiev, in which triumphant episodes alternate with moments of religious contemplation.

One of Germany’s most prominent pianists, Alexander Krichel from Hamburg, has brought together a couple of heavyweights for his first album with Berlin Classics. He combines the “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky, a central work of the piano literature, with a rarely heard gem by the Romanian composer George Enescu.

The new Solo Musica recording "Promenade" of Frédéric Chopin's Préludes, Op. 28 and Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition brings together two prominent piano cycles that are almost emblematic of their creators' oeuvre.

For his second album on the SWR label Robert Neumann chose two works that are easily paired and are close to the pianist’s heart. Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana depicts a character featured in several tales by E.T.A. Hoffmann, while Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition describes the contemplation of art works by the painter Viktor Hartmann. Both are examples of programme music with somewhat comparable ideas but, as Neumann puts it, ‘One idea deals with a real character, the other one doesn’t… And I think both show in an exemplary manner how flawlessly and in different ways a great Romantic cycle can be structured.’

Anna Fedorova explores the Intrigues of the Darkness in these programmatic and extremely virtuosic works for solo piano. The journey from darkness to light begins with Scriabin’s terrifying "Black Mass" Sonata. The work represents a satanic ritual that is possessed by the spectre of the Mephistophelian Liszt. De Falla’s Suite from El Amor brujo conjures a mysterious world, full of magic, rituals and ghost visitations. Ravel described his Gaspard de la nuit as "romantic and of transcendent virtuosity". These highly evocative pieces are based on Aloysius Bertrand’s prose poems depicting scenes of a hanged man sighing on the gallows and a devilish dwarf. Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition portrays many scenes of darkness but emerges into light with the Great Gate of Kiev, in which triumphant episodes alternate with moments of religious contemplation.