Mussorgsky

Mussorgsky wanted music to reproduce the inflections of human speech and prized expressive truth over academic finish. Later musicians often met his work through somebody else’s intervention: Rimsky-Korsakov extensively revised Night on Bald Mountain, while Ravel supplied the best- known orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition. Jazz versions add another layer of transformation, from Bob James’s electric textures to Jo-Yu Chen and Trio X’s smaller ensembles.