The Collaboration
Pictures Reframed, unites two strikingly original artists - pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and visual artist Robin Rhode — in a collaborative performance which centres around Mussorgsky’s epic piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.
Composed in 1874 Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was experimental in its day and highly visual in its content. It is one of today’s most famous pieces of classical music, a work which has been visited and revisited by countless artists over its 130 year history.
Known for his bold “moving” creations and performance-based videos, Robin Rhode and Leif Ove Andsnes have together conceived a programme which brings together music and film in an evocative performance, featuring other solo works by Mussorgsky and Schumann, a new commission by Austrian composer Thomas Larcher and culminating in Mussorgsky’s masterpiece.
" Mussorgsky`s narrative in Pictures at an Exhibition has always made me think of the gallery visitor as an innocent, rather naive soul (perhaps even a child) marching in to see the exhibition, in complete ignorance of what he will encounter. Robin Rhode's children-animations were some of the first pieces of art I saw of his, and the inventive playfulness impressed me. When we worked on Pictures Reframed it struck me that the entire program of the evening could have a childlike spirit. I wanted to include Schumann's Kinderszenen, Mussorgsky's own unfinished Scenes from Childhood (only two movements exist) and Thomas Larcher's new piano cycle What becomes, a piece being partly composed in collaboration with Robin, who has created two new "children-animations" to be shown together with the second and last movement of the piece.
This event is something quite different from what one normally expects to take place in a concert hall; it is partly a concert, partly an art project and we realize that it might be challenging to have to use two senses - to both listen and look- as attentively as one has to. Our ambition has been that we, by combining the two art forms, are creating new artistic landscapes and expressions. Developing this project with Robin, and everyone else involved, has been a wonderfully creative journey and it is our hope that the audience will meet this project with open ears and eyes, in the same childlike manner of the gallery visitor in Mussorgsky's epic piano cycle. "
- Leif Ove AndsnesLeif Ove Andsnes: The Music
“There are pieces of music where you feel everything’s there, everything is said. Pictures at an Exhibition is the juxtaposition to this making it a perfect composition to experiment with as Mussorgsky’s music is incredibly strong but it’s also very open and experimental. The main thing isn`t the notes themselves, but the composer’s grand vision. For me therefore, the original version of the work remains almost as a sketch that is open for transformations and changes.”
Robin Rhode: The Film
“It is risky to take on a project where you are making your own artistic interpretation of such a famously classical work but not because of its experimental nature. I don’t think that it’s a piece which can actually be tied down. As Leif Ove was saying, the fact that it exists as a kind of a sketch allows for these various interpretations.”
Robin Rhode brings a visual vocabulary to Pictures at an Exhibition, inspired by a combination of the music, Hartmann’s original drawings, and the piano as a visual object. The Ten narratives — depicting each movement — are isolated from each other by five different Promenade sequences. Like a musical refrain, the promenades punctuate and fragment the work yet also unify it as a recurrent character dressed in a black suit reappears each time.
Read Robin’s full description of his approach to each movement.
