Mussorgsky on the Strings

On this release, Firma Melodiya presents of Modest Mussorgsky's piano and vocal cycles Pictures at an Exhibition and The Nursery arranged for string orchestra! The transcription was made by Ilya Ioff, a renowned St. Petersburg musician, violinist and conductor and an Honored Artist of Russia. Mussorgsky's works are performed by his chamber orchestra Divertissement. "Just another arrangement", some listeners may say. Mussorgsky's piano and vocal music has seen dozens of different transcriptions and orchestrations throughout 130 years of it's existence. Can a new reading of Pictures at an Exhibition come as a surprise, knowing that the suite was previously played on the organ, bayan and synthesizer, by jazz and rock outfits, and is primarily associated with the gorgeous sound of Ravel's orchestration? Ilya Ioff, the author of the new transcription, is confident that the string arrangement significantly returns this music to the piano original that Ravel's post-impressionistic transcription moved so far away from (the more so because Ravel was guided by the first edition of the Pictures prepared by Rimsky-Korsakov, which had some deviations from Mussorgsky's original). "... As I tried to interpret the piano pattern as a "native" string one, I unintentionally "rehabilitated" the Russianness of this great cycle by adding, on the one hand, more melodiousness coming from the nature of the string instruments, and, on the other, running away from the temptation of "coloring" the material with effects untypical for 19th century Russian music", Ilya Ioff writes.