A Gallery in Sound

What happens when paintings become music?

In Pictures at an Exhibition, prize-winning pianist Yutong Sun invites audiences to follow Mussorgsky through an imagined gallery, where each artwork opens into a new musical world.

The work was composed in memory of Mussorgsky’s friend Viktor Hartmann, an artist, architect and designer who died suddenly in 1873. After visiting an exhibition of Hartmann’s work, Mussorgsky transformed what he had seen into a sequence of vivid scenes for solo piano.

A recurring Promenade represents the composer walking from one picture to the next. Along the way, sketches and designs become characters, landscapes and dramatic encounters, from the playful Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks to the ferocity of The Hut on Hen’s Legs and the monumental grandeur of The Great Gate of Kyiv.

Many of Hartmann’s original works have since been lost, but Mussorgsky’s music has allowed their stories to endure. In the hands of Yutong Sun, the piano becomes an exhibition space of its own, filled with colour, movement and striking contrasts.

The programme places this landmark work alongside a selection of other piano repertoire, revealing Sun’s poetic sensibility, clarity of interpretation and command of the instrument.

Genre: Classical / Solo Piano