Walking through Pictures at an Exhibition

Programme notes

Walking through Pictures at an Exhibition is a site-specific transcreation for a large choir of clarinets that was conceived for and played at the National Gallery, Singapore. Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite of ten movements for piano that was written by the Russian composer Modeste Mussorgsky as a "walk" through an exhibition in Moscow in 1974, after the sudden demise of his friend the painter Viktor Hartmann in 1873. Mussorgsky's suite starts with a "Promenade" that is subsequently repeated four times whilst undergoing variations. The 2018 transcreation by Robert Casteels makes a clarinet octet "walk" through Mussorgsky's "walk", i.e. after playing in extenso the first "Promenade", each subsequent movement is quoted whilst each subsequent "Promenade" is omitted. In the meantime, ambulating clarinets disseminated in the museum's galleries physically "walk" towards a central point whilst playing quotes from Mussorgsky's "walk". In part two performed at a central point in the museum, all clarinets engage in an improvisation, taking the transcreation as a departure point. Part three ends with the coda of Mussorgky's coda. In summary, the mind of the audience will have accomplished a quadruple "metawalk" of a walk's walk's walk's walk.

Completion of the transcreation 

10-V-2018