For a Proms concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1991, Leonard Slatkin introduced his own edition of Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition.’ It featured the various ‘Promenades’ and ‘Pictures’ in different arrangements by an assortment of orchestrators. Ravel’s version is the best known but other arrangers of Mussorgsky’s piano work were Leopold Stokowski, Sir Henry Wood, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mikhail Tushmalov, Lawrence Leonard, Lucien Cailliet, Sergei Gorchakov and Leonidas Leonardi, all of whom were featured in Slatkin’s performance. As an encore, he brought the house down with Sir Henry Wood’s version of ‘The Great Gate of Kiev.’
The television relay of the concert was preceded by a short documentary which featured Slatkin discussing the work with pianist Joanna MacGregor, as well as contributions from Vladimir Ashkenazy and Lawrence Leonard, two of the arrangers featured in his compendium. The individual cue points in the TV programme are shown below.
0:00:40 Feature Documentary
0:12:30 Slatkin Discussion
0:19:15 Philharmonia Proms Performance
0:55:00 Henry Wood Encore
With apologies for some slight visual and audio defects: source material is an old VHS tape!