A member of "The Mighty Handful" a.k.a. "The Five", but no one could have been more modest.
The final movement of "Pictures" sounds like it could have been written with a hammer, and is extremely "muscular" music.
Music like this, more than likely, could have only been written by an obsessively raging alcoholic.( See the Detail from Ilya Repin's celebrated portrait of Mussorgsky, painted in the hospital from March 2–5, 1881, only a few days before the composer's death.
And...I love it obsessively.
You must listen to the entire piece to get the full effect, but here is the summation, the entry into the Great Gates of Kiev.
I really like the orchestral piece in the 1st vid, but it was after all written as a piano piece and no one does it better than Kissin.
