Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
July 18, 2018

Mussorgsky’s piano work Pictures At An Exhibition has been orchestrated several times, including by the conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy and Leopold Stokowski, but the orchestration commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky in 1930 from Maurice Ravel is still the preferred version. No one else has had a better idea than using alto saxophone for the solo in The Old Castle. The piece is well known, consisting of impressions of the pictures Mussorgsky saw at a memorial exhibition for his friend, the artist Viktor Hartmann. The musical portraits are often (but not always) separated by a memorable Promenade theme.

Benjamin Beilman

In this concert, visiting conductor Giancarlo Guerrero began at a stately pace, and separated the various sections of the work with longer pauses than usual: a panoramic view, if you like. I thought the earlier “pictures” lacked edge (notably the children in the Tuileries, and the menacing Gnomus), but later the performance caught fire with an especially well-shaped Two Polish Jews and Baba Yaga, both played with great precision and attack. Guerrero’s ladies in the Limoges marketplace were definitely arguing, not merely gossiping!

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