An interesting lp from 1974 containing yet another orchestration of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," this time from the pen of one Mikhail Tushmalov.
From Wikipedia:
Mikhail Tushmalov (1861 - 1896) was a Russian Georgian opera conductor who held posts in Warsaw and Tiflis (Tbilisi). He died in what is now the nation of Georgia.
The opening bars of Tushmalov's orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition. Tushmalov is most widely discussed today as the first person to have prepared an orchestral version of Modest Mussorgsky's 1874 piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Tushmalov's version sets an abridged version of the piece. It may have been completed as early as 1886, when Tushmalov was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov. Reports circulate that Rimsky-Korsakov sketched the beginning of his own orchestration of Mussorgsky's piece, but abandoned the project when Tushmalov took up the task. The role possibly played by the teacher in shaping the orchestration by his student is not known. The first performance of Tushmalov's orchestration was conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov in Saint Petersburg on November 30, 1891.
Tushmalov's version of Mussorgsky's score is one of the least complete, as it omits 'Gnomus', 'Tuileries' and 'Bydlo' together with all the 'Promenades' except the fifth—which it puts in place of the first. Tushmalov's score is often described as dark and restrained in colour, and thus more authentically 'Russian' in its approach to the score than the later, more virtuosic orchestration by Ravel.
The Swiss conductor Marc Andreae leads very straightforward performances with the Munich Philharmonic. I've read a couple reviews describing these as "businesslike" and that is probably an apt description. The orchestration, however, has its moments and is somewhat reminiscent of Stokowski's, which too, is abbreviated from the original piano score. All in all, Ravel does provide the most color, which should not be surprising since he was one of the greatest masters of orchestration of all time.
An interesting curiosity indeed.
DOWNLOAD
