PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

two-piano transcription

M. Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition Two PianoTranscription by  Fedorova & Takser

A Note from the Authors of this Transcription:

This two-piano version of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition owes its existence to pure chance. In 2017, we were invited to perform at a major concert in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, with a single programmatic condition: to play Pictures at an Exhibition on two grand pianos. Having agreed to participate, we set out to explore the existing arrangements, only to discover, much to our surprise, that none quite met our artistic and performance needs. The available settings fell into two distinct approaches: Personalized arrangements, where the arrangers naturally brought much of their own creative personality to the score through bold textural and harmonic additions—though, for us, this softened that essential angularity and starkness for which we love Modest Petrovich’s music in the first place. Transcriptions of Maurice Ravel’s orchestration, which simply do not translate back onto two keyboards without losing their intrinsic character, remaining essentially a mechanical reduction of the orchestral score.

Our aim was entirely different: to preserve Mussorgsky’s authentic harmonic and textural idiom, augmenting it only where the convergence of two grand pianos offered a genuine acoustic advantage and a distinctive sonoristic depth, amplifying the already colossal scale of this masterpiece. We feel this setting achieves a fine equilibrium—gratifyingly tactile, deeply considered, and brilliantly effective.

Pianists endowed with larger hands—and those who have previously tackled the solo original—will particularly relish the Second Piano part. For refined sensibilities with a flair for virtuosity, the First Piano part will prove an ideal fit. We hope you find as much joy in performing this transcription as we have.

With warm regards,

Daria Fedorova and Ilya Takser