As the 19^th century progressed, many composers from the Slav lands began searching for ways of emancipating themselves from what they perceived to be the domination of German traditions of form and harmony.

Chopin (1810-1849) by the sheer force of his genius blazed the trail for those who came after: his Fantaisie op. 49 (1841) is one of his greatest and most tragic utterances, inspired by his Polish homeland, and shows him consolidating new methods of rendering cohesive large-scale structures.

Mussorgsky (1839-1881) composed his Pictures (1874) in memory of his close friend, the architect and painter Viktor Hartmann, whose work was celebrated in a posthumous Exhibition, and whose early death deprived him of fulfilling the dream he shared with Mussorgsky, of rejecting Western influences and of renewing a Russian national art… Astonishingly original, Mussorgsky’s Tableaux place him on a par with the great Russian novelists in their unforgettable depiction of Tsarist Russia.