Pictures at an Exhibition - A Visual Concert

The Music
In 1874, Modest Mussorgsky composed the piano cycle PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION, inspired by an exhibition of drawings and stage designs by his deceased friend Viktor Hartmann. In a musical stroll through this exhibition, Mussorgsky captures the moods and feelings that these images evoked in him. The melodies of the "Promenade," "The Chickens in Their Shells," or "Bydlo," the Russian ox cart, are now known worldwide and have been adapted musically many times, yet almost all of Hartmann's original images have been lost and live on only in Mussorgsky's music.
The Piece
In her staging as visual theater, Karin Schäfer has reversed the original creation process: just as the composer once transformed images into music, she developed new "pictures" from the music itself, drawing from the colors of sound and the tonal stories told by the individual pieces. These new images are entirely different from the original and lost ones. This is a very special exhibition, as it is brought to life by the music, and the images displayed tell their own - equally humorous and surprising - new stories through figures, light and shadow, projections, and movement.
Duration: approximately 60 minutes, no intermission.