Pictures at an Exhibition[a] is a piano suite in ten movements, plus a recurring and varied Promenade theme, written in 1874 by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky.

It is a musical depiction of a tour of an exhibition of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, following his sudden death in the previous year.

The composition has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists, and became widely known from orchestrations and arrangements produced by other composers and contemporary musicians, with Maurice Ravel's 1922 adaptation for orchestra being the most recorded and performed.

The disintegration of The Mighty Handful and their failure to understand his artistic goals contributed to the isolation he experienced as an outsider in Saint Petersburg's musical establishment.

Stasov helped to organize a memorial exhibition of over 400 Hartmann works in the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in February and March 1874.

[5] In a letter to Stasov (see photo), probably written on 12 June 1874, he describes his progress: My dear généralissime, Hartmann is boiling as Boris boiled—sounds and ideas hung in the air, I am gulping and overeating, and can barely manage to scribble them on paper.

In music for these illustrations, as Mussorgsky called them, he represented [chicks], children, Baba Yaga in her wooden house on chicken legs, catacombs, gates, and even rattling carts.

All this was not done jokingly, but 'seriously'.There was no end to the enthusiasm shown by his devotees; but many of Mussorgsky's friends, on the other hand, and especially the comrade composers, were seriously puzzled and, listening to the 'novelty,' shook their heads in bewilderment.

[10]In August, Mussorgsky completed the last two songs of Sunless and then resumed work on Khovanshchina, composing the prelude to Act 1 ("Dawn on the Moscow River") in September.

Only in 1931, marking the 50th anniversary of the composer's death, was Pictures at an Exhibition published in a scholarly edition in agreement with his manuscript, to be included in Volume 8 of Pavel Lamm's M. P. Mussorgsky: Complete Collected Works (1939).

A turn is taken in the work at the "Catacombae" when the Promenade theme stops functioning as merely a linking device and becomes, in "Cum mortuis", an integral element of the movement itself.

Vladimir Stasov's comment: In this piece Mussorgsky depicts himself "roving through the exhibition, now leisurely, now briskly in order to come close to a picture that had attracted his attention, and at times sadly, thinking of his departed friend."

This movement is thought to be based on a watercolor depiction of an Italian castle and is portrayed in Ravel's orchestration by a bassoon and alto saxophone duet.

After reaching a climax (con tutta forza), the dynamic marking is abruptly piano (bar 47), followed by a diminuendo to a final pianississimo (ppp), suggesting the oxcart receding into the distance.

Rimsky-Korsakov's edition, and arrangements based on it such as Ravel's, begin quietly, build gradually (crescendo) to fortissimo and then undergo a diminuendo, suggesting the oxcart approaching, passing the listener, and then receding.

Stasov's comment: "Hartmann's sketch was his design for city gates at Kiev in the ancient Russian massive style with a cupola shaped like a slavonic helmet."

Hartmann designed a monumental gate for Tsar Alexander II to commemorate the monarch's narrow escape from an assassination attempt on April 4, 1866.

In 2009, the German pianist Lars David Kellner [de] published the original version of Gnomus on his Mussorgsky album (Enharmonic) as a premiere.

However, his version (first performed in 1891 and possibly produced as early as 1886 when he was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov)[23] does not include the entire suite: Only seven of the ten "pictures" are present, leaving out "Gnomus", "Tuileries", and "Cattle", and all the Promenades are omitted except for the last one, which is used in place of the first.

Wood's orchestration was once described by Gordon Jacob as "superior to Ravel's in picturesqueness and vividness",[24] with its off-stage camel-bells in "Cattle" and grand organ in "The Great Gate of Kyiv".

The first person to orchestrate the piece in its entirety was the Slovenian-born conductor and violinist Leo Funtek, who finished his version in 1922 while living and working in Finland.

His instrumental colors—a trumpet solo for the opening Promenade, dark woodwind tones for passages suggesting Orthodox chant, the piccolo and high strings for the children's "chicks in shells"—are widely admired.

Regardless, Leonardi's orchestration was soon eclipsed by Ravel's, and today only the third Promenade and "Tuileries" movement of his version may be heard on audio record (Leonard Slatkin/Saint Louis Symphony: The Slatkin Years: 6 CD Set).

Ormandy wanted a version of Pictures of his own and commissioned Lucien Cailliet, the Philadelphia Orchestra's 'house arranger' and player in the woodwind section, to produce one.

Walter Goehr published a version in 1942 for smaller forces than Ravel but curiously dropped "Gnomus" altogether and made "Limoges" the first piece.

The score, finally published in 1971, has since been recorded by other conductors, including Matthias Bamert, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Oliver Knussen and José Serebrier.

Although Ravel's version is most often performed and recorded, a number of conductors have made their own changes to the scoring, including Arturo Toscanini, Nikolai Golovanov, and James Conlon.

Conductor and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy produced his own orchestral arrangement, expressing dissatisfaction with Ravel's interpretive liberties and perpetuation of early printing errors.

Excerpts have also been recorded, including a 78 rpm disc of "The Old Castle" and "Catacombs" orchestrated by Sir Granville Bantock, and a spectacular version of "The Great Gate of Kyiv" was scored by Douglas Gamley for full symphony orchestra, male voice choir and organ.

[27] Movements were provided by Alastair King, Roger May, Tolib Shakhidi, David Butterworth, Philip Mackenzie, Simon Whiteside, Daryl Griffiths, Natalia Villanueva, James McWilliam and Julian Kershaw.