Modest Mussorgsky 1839–1881 arr. Julian Yu b. 1957 Pictures at an Exhibition Promenade Gnomus Promenade Il vecchio castello Promenade Les Tuileries (Dispute d'enfants après jeux) Bydło (The Cart) Promenade Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition started its life as a solo piano work in 1874 and still remains one of the most colourful programmatic cycles in the piano repertoire. Inspired by a showing of art works by his friend Victor Hartmann, these Pictures have in turn fired many more levels of imagination. The Russian Tushmalov was the first to start an orchestration and the Brit Henry Wood made another version in 1915. Ravel’s 1922 orchestration however became a defining moment of what the colours of modern orchestra can achieve in the hands of a true alchemist. It even prompted a number of existing versions to be withdrawn. Yet Leopold Stokowski decried the Ravel orchestration as “too Gallic”, and created a more Slavic version, involving a fair amount of re-composition. Many years later, in ordinary suburban Melbourne, an entirely new Pictures, far from ordinary, emerged out of the hands of Beijingborn composer Julian Yu. Having been brought up in the old Chinese music education system
Ballet of the Unhatched Chickens Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle Promenade Limoges. Le marché Catacombae (Sepulcrum romanum) Cum mortuis in lingua mortua The Hut on Hen's Legs (Baba-Yagá) The Great Gate of Kiev which was heavily influenced by Russia, he spread his wings and spent time in Japan and US before settling in Australia in the 1980s. He resists being labelled a ‘Chinese’ composer, preferring to refer to the innate structures and attitudes of the Chinese creative mind. Conversely, he has famously embraced methods of re-creation following ancient models, as well as the art of transcription and orchestration as a way of entering a different mind, only in order to reveal one’s own thought processes more clearly. This gentle but very deep paradox lies at the heart of his work. Yu's arrangement thus eschews the grandeur of the traditional versions. Instead Yu introduces exotic sounds and an often pointillistic treatment of melody that sweeps the work (along with our contemporary picture-viewing) into a slightly surreal level, perhaps the reminiscence of a culture forever lost, or the obfuscatory layers of contemporary art viewing, be it in China, Russia or Australia. Roland Peelman
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