Karajan conducts Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (Orch. Ravel)

The hut with hen's legs, the ballet of the unhatched chicks, the towering grandeur of The Great Gate of Kiev…Modest Mussorgsky captured something of the Russian soul when he immortalised the paintings of his late friend Viktor Hartmann in his 1874 piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. But it was the Frenchman Maurice Ravel, half a century later, who reimagined Mussorgsky's suite in all the fabulous colours of a full symphony orchestra: glowing, glittering, and firing the imagination with every note. It's one of the great showpieces for a virtuoso orchestra, and in 1986 few ensembles on earth were more virtuosic than Herbert von Karajan's Berlin Philharmonic. It's never been played with more power, precision or mastery.

Ensemble: 

Berliner Philharmoniker

Conductor: 

Herbert von Karajan