Symphony Concert III | Staatsoper

Modest Mussorgsky
Eine Nacht auf dem kahlen Berge

Béla Bartók
Viola concert

Modest Mussorgsky
Bilder einer Ausstellung (Orchestration: Maurice Ravel)

As one of the leading figures of the so-called “Mighty Handful” of 19th-century Russian avant-garde composers, Modest Mussorgsky made music history. In essence, he was the “original genius” of this group, rejecting academic training and traditions while drawing on a natural creative force from the depths of his own soul and on primitive folk music.

The famous Bilder einer Ausstellung, composed for piano in 1874, have become, alongside his opera Boris Godunow, the hallmark of his oeuvre – in 1922, Maurice Ravel orchestrated them with great sophistication and to great effect. The orchestral work Eine Nacht auf dem kahlen Berge, a symphonic poem evoking witches, ghosts, and a deliberately eerie setting, was composed in the 1860s. Béla Bartók’s Viola Concerto, his only composition of this kind, took shape in 1945, the year of his death, but remained unfinished. With its generally lyrical yet serious character, it ranks among Bartók’s most haunting late works.