Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition

Last night I finished an essay that I'd been working on for way too long, and after I finally finished it I wanted some loud celebratory music. Unfortunately it was 2 at night and my neighbours probably wouldn't have appreciated any type of loudness, but here's what I would've played if it wouldn't have been so late:

Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition: Baba Yaga (orchestrated by Maurice Ravel).
Played by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by professional badass Esa-Pekka Salonen (this fragment also has The Great Gates of Kiev which is really not half as much fun).

Some more Pictures at an Exhibition: Bydlo, Promenade and Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks.

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was a Russian composer and member of 'The Five' (the others being Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Balakirev and Cui). His most famous works, apart from the Pictures at an Exhibition are probably Night on Bald Mountain and the AMAZING opera Boris Godunov. I have to admit that I don't know all that much about Mussorgsky (maybe I should stop saying this though, because I only really know things about Shostakovich) but he had a very impressive beard. Pictures at an Exhibition was originally a piano suite, and it was inspired by a number of paintings by Viktor Hartmann. Maurice Ravel (a very good composer in his own right) fortunately made an awesome orchestration (as did a whole bunch of other people like Ashkenazy and Stokowski). It's a very interesting piece of music because it really does seem to depict the paintings, Mussorgsky seems somehow to have translated visual elements into musical notes (and added a whole lotta extra UMPH). For more information about the paintings and the music I recommend reading this blogpost.

If you like this, you should listen to the rest of Pictures at an Exhibition, Part I, Part II, Part IV, Part V and also the aforementioned Night on Bald Mountain.