Listening to the music, I hear for the first time the sounds and music which must have been conjured in the imagination of Mussorgsky by the paintings. I had not seen the paintings until after the concert, but based on the titles of each movement, I was finally familiar with the programmatic content intended. I've heard this piece countless times without thinking about the programmatic content - and perhaps that's good because I could hear and interpret for myself what the music means to me. This evening what occurred to me is that every other movement seems to alternate between something hauntingly beautiful, as with one movement that effectively uses the Saxophone, Bassoon and Oboe to blend an eerie effect, with other rather upbeat and snappy movements like the 'Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells' and 'Baba-Yaga - The Hut on Fowl's Legs'. The conclusions came in the form of The Great Gate of Kiev, by far the longest and most impressive conglomeration of brass and bravado led by conductor Manfred Honeck and the PSO to bring the audience to an eventual standing ovation.
The surviving works by Hartmann that can be shown with any certainty to have been used by Mussorgsky in assembling his suite, along with their titles,[2] are as follows:
No. 5
No. 6a
No. 6b
No. 8 Paris catacombs (with the figures of V. A. Hartmann, V. A. Kenel, and a guide, holding a lantern)
No. 9 The hut of Baba-Yaga on hen's legs–clock in the Russian Style
No. 10 Project for a city gate in Kiev–main façade
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