Power is more than volume
The title promises a grand gesture. Yet The Power of the Orchestra becomes particularly interesting when the orchestra is holding something back: a single colour, a brief movement, the space before an entrance. The large eruptions have a history. Waiting only for those moments means missing much of what makes Mussorgsky’s music so vividly pictorial.
René Leibowitz and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra pair “A Night on Bare Mountain” with Pictures at an Exhibition. Recorded in London’s Kingsway Hall in 1962, with Kenneth Wilkinson engineering, the album has a specific recording environment behind its reputation. But it need not be approached as a test for a sound system. It is equally inviting as a sequence of contrasting musical states.
Specific pictures behind the great gate
Mussorgsky wrote Pictures at an Exhibition in 1874 after a memorial exhibition for his friend Viktor Hartmann. The piano work does not describe an entirely imaginary gallery. Drawings and designs provide its starting points, while the recurring Promenade brings the visitor into the sequence.
Those models are surprisingly varied. Gnomus relates to a grotesque nutcracker; the great gate of Kyiv derives from an architectural design that was never built. The monumental ending therefore does not simply portray a structure Mussorgsky could visit. Music gives the unbuilt project a presence it never acquired outside art. That is more intriguing than a general image of imposing Russian scenery.
Between the pictures, the Promenade is more than an attractive interlude. Somebody is looking, moving on and carrying an impression of what has just been seen. Ravel’s 1922 orchestration translates that piano world into changing instrumental colours. On a record promising the orchestra’s power, contrast becomes a major part of the pleasure: the individual pictures cannot all be equally heavy, loud or monumental.
A deliberate four-side presentation
On this 45 RPM edition, “A Night on Bare Mountain” occupies the opening side, while Pictures at an Exhibition spans the remaining three. That is useful to know before choosing the pressing: the larger work requires side changes. This is a specifically four-sided vinyl presentation, not an uninterrupted traversal of the cycle. To keep its longer arc in view, let each pause remain a brief intermission and return to the next side with the same musical thread in mind.
About this pressing
Analogue Productions · RCA Living Stereo · AAPC 2659-45 · 2 LPs · 180 g vinyl per disc · 45 RPM. Mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound from the original analog master tape. Pressed at Quality Record Pressings (QRP). Includes a two-panel insert.
Customer question: Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe
Series: RCA Living Stereo – all 25 titles, conductors and soloists
Musicians
Documented selection of participating musicians. Personnel may vary by track; this list does not claim to be complete.
- René LeibowitzConductor
- Royal Philharmonic OrchestraOrchestra
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