© NRK/Courtesy EMI Classics and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York

Leif Ove Andsnes and Robin Rhode, installation view of "Pictures Reframed" (performance documentation), Risør Festival of Chamber Music, Risør, Norway (2009). Piano cycle, five graphically printed panels, video projection, dimensions variable.

November 2009 Field Guide

The State of Things

Oleg Kulik

James Turrell

Omer Fast

Bill Viola

Federico Fellini

Alfred Leslie

Robin Rhode FIAC’s Cour Carrée “So Good It’s Scary” Editor’s Letter Fleur Elise Noble Rules of the Rhode 2009 Preview: Art in a Vast Continent

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

The Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky created the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition (1874) as a tribute to his recently deceased friend, the architect and artist Victor Hartmann. His intent was to give life to Hartmann’s visual works, specifically 10 drawings and watercolors. In the process of immortalizing his friend, Mussorgsky created one of the seminal works in Russian classical music, more massive and lasting than its inspiration. Over a century later, Pictures at an Exhibition is the framework for another music-art connection, this time a collaboration between two virtuosos in different fields — the energetic 33-year-old South African performance and mixed-media artist Robin Rhode and the subtle, soft-spoken, award-winning 39-year-old Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. For Pictures Reframed, debuting this month at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Andsnes will perform Mussorgsky’s suite accompanied by five hanging panels and a rear video projection created by Rhode, a juxtaposition that they hope will offer the audience a transcendental sensory experience. Marina Cashdan spoke with Rhode and Andsnes about Pictures Reframed. 

MC: Leif, with its direct correlation between art and music, Pictures at an Exhibition seems like an obvious choice for introducing the visual arts into your repertoire. But was it as simple as that?

LOA: It needed to be a very, very strong piece of music to have that many visuals, and this is an iconic piece of music, maybe the most famous Russian piece for the solo piano, inspired by rather simple drawings by Hartmann. It’s kind of obvious to turn back to visuals, because it came from visual arts, but it was also a great challenge, because there was already a strong narrative in the piece. So in that way, it wasn’t an obvious choice. But it was a very intriguing thing to think about and to work on. 

MC: Where did you two first meet?

RR: The first meeting was actually in 2007, at my exhibition in Munich at Haus der Kunst. It was quite a large-scale exhibition, so Leif had the opportunity to see the sculptural aspect of my work. It was quite an extensive show that also included live performance. I collaborated with a pianist as well, and just by coincidence, we both knew this pianist, so it was a kind of common [ground].

MC: And was it difficult with you touring, Leif, and you, Robin, in Berlin, to develop the concept?

LOA: Well, we knew that the project would happen this autumn and that we would need to be finished around summer.

RR: I would attend some concerts of Leif’s, and Leif would attend some of my shows. There have been meetings along the way

LOA: We’ve had some good phone conversations, but the best meetings have been when we sit down and talk about it — if I play and if he shows me things.

MC: Robin, did you look at the Victor Hartmann paintings and watercolors Mussorgsky was referring to before or while creating your visuals? If so, is there any direct relationship between what you’ve created and his work?

RR: Yes, I did. Instead of my normal artistic process, where I work for myself using my own conceptual ideas and my own particular kind of framework, in this case I was given an interesting framework, which is a body of drawings from which to be inspired. And yes, a lot of Hartmann’s works were starting points.

MC: Are there any particular pieces that especially influenced your creation?

RR: I think one of the most moving pieces for me would be Bydlo, because in 2006 and 2007 I filmed a train station very close to my neighborhood in Johannesburg using this very basic black-and-white Super 8 film. I was filming the train station, train tracks, and the surrounding landscape, and I never knew what to do with the footage. Bydlo was a sketch by Hartmann of an ox wagon in a Polish ghetto in Russia. I was asking myself how I would now re-create an artwork based on a drawing from the 1870s. I began to realize what the drawing of this ox wagon symbolized. It was a symbol for the struggle of Polish people living under Russian rule, and in my train station film, the train was exactly like the ox wagon in South Africa.