Modest Mussorgsky died in 1886, too soon for him to enjoy the success of his Pictures at an Exhibition, for in his lifetime the piano cycle was neither acknowledged nor performed. It was Maurice Ravel’s orchestration for the Russian-American conductor Serge Koussevitzky that initiated the triumphal progress of the work, which is now one of the world’s most often played pieces. Reason enough for the Tonkunstler Orchestra under the baton of the Russian conductor Dmitrij Kitajenko to devote an entire concert programme to the creator of this memorable work. It couples Pictures at an Exhibition with the suitably Lenten song cycle Songs and Dances of Death in the orchestral version by Edison Denisov and the prelude to his opera Khovanshchina.