The multi-coloured plumage of Ravel’s famous orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is perhaps more popular than the solo piano original, but I’ve always preferred the raw drama and visceral impact of the latter.
For her new album Pictures, New Zealand pianist Somi Kim explores the rich complexity of piano sound. She also brings something new, pairing her insightful interpretation of Mussorgsky’s original with Aotearoa Pictures, an 11-part suite from New Zealand composer Janet Jennings. Mussorgsky’s Pictures was composed in tribute to his artist friend Viktor Hartmann after the latter’s sudden death aged just 39. The famous Promenade, played here with unaffected lightness, walks us into a gallery of Hartmann’s artworks.
Kim’s virtuosity is on full display. There’s dramatic attack in Gnomus, lovely long-spun melody in The Old Castle, light-hearted children squabbling in Tuileries, and lugubrious Bydlo, inspired by a painting of plodding oxen.
Her facility and sense of character are perfect for the fleet Ballet of Unhatched Chicks, reflecting Hartmann’s stage designs. For two Polish Jews of the sixth movement, Kim illustrates arguing characters with an array of timbres, before another unfussy Promenade into the populous market at Limoges.
The sudden darkness of Catacombs reflects Mussorgsky’s grief, Kim allowing time for the harmonies to unfold. The composer mentions “gleaming skulls”, setting high-pitched quiet tremolos against deep resonance.
The breathtaking, penultimate Hut on Hen’s Legs is Pictures’ emotional climax, depicting witch Baba Yaga in frightening chase. I’ve heard this movement faster and more terrifying and wished Kim had pushed it even further. With wonderful grandeur, she depicts the final Great Gate of Kiev, bells pealing, priests chanting – a majestic ending to a great work.
Aotearoa Pictures: Eleven Thoughts Form, Jennings’ responses to artworks by four New Zealanders, makes a terrific foil for the Mussorgsky. Artist Areez Katki inspired the first three movements, his fragmented embroidered surfaces and complex, layered khadi paper marvellously reflected in contrapuntal textures. Kim’s playing is all delicious character and dreamy lightness.
Next, three atonal movements, based on art by Alberto Garcia Alvarez, bring a darker, heavier quality, Kim’s versatility allowing variety in style and sonority.
Hiria Anderson-Mita’s oil-paintings of agricultural trophies have inspired four charmingly humorous movements. In Champion Short Horn Cow, the cow “makes her own comments in the bass-line … as she plods towards her moment of triumph”. A droll answer to Mussorgsky’s Bydlo?
Music glowing with shadowy colours ends the suite, conjuring Star Gossage’s painting that inspired the 11th piece. Jennings’ Aotearoa Pictures is a brilliant addition to Aotearoa’s solo piano music.
Pictures at an Exhibition, Somi Kim (piano), music by Mussorgsky and Janet Jennings (Atoll).
