Mikhail Tushmalov

Who was Mikhail Tushmalov?

Mikhail Tushmalov was a Russian Georgian opera conductor who held posts in Warsaw and Tiflis. He died in what is now the nation of Georgia.

Tushmalov is most widely discussed today as the first person to have prepared an orchestral version of Modest Mussorgsky's 1874 piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Tushmalov's version sets an abridged version of the piece. It may have been completed as early as 1886, when Tushmalov was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov. Reports circulate that Rimsky-Korsakov sketched the beginning of his own orchestration of Mussorgsky's piece, but abandoned the project when Tushmalov took up the task. The role possibly played by the teacher in shaping the orchestration by his student is not known. The first performance of Tushmalov's orchestration was conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov in Saint Petersburg on November 30, 1891. The score was published by Bessel the same year and issued in a corrected edition sometime after Tushmalov's death. Tushmalov's orchestration has in recent years been reprinted by Kalmus.