This week’s program features several works that conjure visual images. First up is Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, based on artwork by Viktor Hartmann. Even without seeing those paintings, it’s not hard to imagine the depictions of the dim Parisian catacombs and the majestic gates of Kiev that inspired Mussorgsky’s music. We then get two very different depictions of flowing water, in a set of Franz Liszt arrangements of Schubert songs. The first song, the sorrowful final movement of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, changes character entirely when the voice of the brook enters, bringing with it flowing sextuplets and a major tonality shift. The second work, loosely translated as “To be sung upon the water,” is perhaps a more obvious depiction of water, with a fluid triple meter throughout, the undulating water a constant beneath the singer’s description of a glowing sunset. Finally, we hear Liszt’s concert paraphrase of Verdi’s opera Rigoletto, specifically an arrangement of the famous Act 3 quartet.
