Russian architect and painter Viktor Hartmann (of German descent) was born in St Petersburg in 1834 and won highest honors at the St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. Following this he produced countless sketches, watercolors and even early photographs of cathedrals and other architectural wonders not only in Russia but France, Italy, Germany and Poland, as well as his own original designs. He followed a movement in which artists of every medium sought to revive and depict a uniquely Russian aesthetic. It was through association with this movement that Hartmann met like-minded composer Mily Balakirev and his circle of composers pursuing the same ideals. This group of composers included Modest Mussorgsky, with whom Hartmann became close friends. Hartmann’s sudden death of a brain aneurysm at age 39 (1873) shook Mussorgsky (and other Russian artists) and an exhibition of over 400 artworks was assembled in his honor in early 1874, with Mussorgsky and others contributing Hartmann works from their own collections. Moved by the exhibition, Mussorgsky composed a suite of ten “pictures” for solo piano inspired by his friend’s artworks. Nearly fifty years later, in 1922, Maurice Ravel brilliantly orchestrated the piano suite. Hear the orchestral color he added to Mussorgsky’s piano sketches today at 2:00pm in “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Incidentally, of the more than 400 works displayed at the Exhibition, today only about sixty-five can be accounted for, and only images of six of the ten originals that inspired Mussorgsky. Above is Hartmann’s proposed design that inspired Mussorgsky’s famous “Great Gate of Kiev” final movement.