Leopold Stokowski's orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky was completed in 1939 and premiered later that year, on 17 November, by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Mussorgsky's original 1874 composition was a suite for piano, however, the piece has gained most of its fame through the many orchestrations of it that have been produced. The most popular of these arrangements was completed in 1922 by French composer Maurice Ravel. Stokowski introduced the Ravel orchestration of Pictures to Philadelphia audiences in 1929, but was not fully satisfied with the arrangement, feeling it needed a more Slavic sound. His version was finished 10 years later, without much of the French influence he saw in Ravel's.
