Les Arts combines theatre and visual arts with the music of Mussorgsky in its educational show ‘Musical Arenas’
28.02.2022
Arts is Education
- Judit Kertész plays 'Pictures at an Exhibition' on the piano while Borja González creates in sand the canvases of Viktor Hartmann that Mussorgsky immortalized
- Les Arts has scheduled three sessions open to the public: Sunday, February 27, and Saturday, March 5 and Sunday, March 6
Valencia (25.02.22). The Palau de les Arts combines music, theater and visual arts in 'Musical Arenas', an educational show based on the work 'Pictures at an Exhibition', by Modest Mussorgsky.
Les Arts revives its latest educational offering this week following its popular success last season. Aimed at students aged ten and up, the production combines different artistic disciplines to enhance the sensory and perceptual experience of young children with a landmark piece of program music.
The performance is based on the piano work that Modest Mussorgsky composed inspired by a posthumous exhibition of his friend, the Russian painter and architect Viktor Hartmann, who died at only 39 years old. The score consists of ten movements, which depict watercolors, paintings, sketches, and engravings by the artist—most of which have since disappeared—that were part of that exhibition.
Les Arts places the viewer before the visit of Viktor Hartmann himself, who 149 years after his death returns to the Master Classroom of the theater to see his own exhibition and listen to the musical transcription that his friend Modest Mussorgsky made of each of his paintings.
Pianist Judith Kertész performs the famous suite by the Russian composer, while actor Santiago Martínez brings to life the ill-fated painter who contemplates the sand canvases that Borja González creates to the rhythm of the score.
Conceived and developed by the head of the Les Arts educational program, Víctor Gil, 'Musical Arenas' combines and works on different artistic disciplines and perceptual areas of the spectator.
On one hand, the project stimulates auditory skills through a piano performance of Judit Kertész's complete original work, while Santiago Martínez's dramatization allows for the development of cognitive skills by acting as a guide and bridge between the past and the present. Likewise, the work of sand artist Borja González emphasizes the visual aspect with the on-site creation of each of the pieces that make up the exhibition.
The activity also allows for a more detailed understanding of the figures of Viktor Hartmann and Modest Mussorgsky; the latter, one of the great innovators of Russian music of the Romantic period, whose piano work would reach new heights of popularity years later with the famous orchestral transcription premiered in 1922 by Maurice Ravel.
'Les Arts és Educació' has reserved four performances of 'Arenas Musicales' for the Educational Program. However, the doors of the Aula Magistral will be open to the general public for the three sessions taking place on Sunday, February 27, and Saturday, March 5 and Sunday, March 6, all at 12 noon.
