MARCELA Fiorillo may appear to be elegant and petite, but she is a fiery exponents of the piano, as anyone who has ever heard her play Liszt will know.

This ability to explore and exploit all the shades of the pianoforte came to the fore in a thrilling, rare performance of the early piano version of Mussorgsky’s ” Pictures at an Exhibition.”

The recital was dedicated to her late maestro and admirer of Russian music, Haydee Loustanau.

The main recital was prefaced by a short performance of four preludes and “Sonate N.4, Op.30” by Alexander Scriabin, which gave us a foretaste of what was to come, as Fiorillo ranged from powerful and passionate though lighter, complex rhythms to a dramatic finale.

After a short break, music scholar Vincent Plush presented a clear, down-to-earth description of the relationship between Mussorgsky and the patriotic Russian artist Viktor Hartmann, on whose posthumous exhibition in 1874 the composer’s most popular work was based.

There was  singular serendipity in the fact that Fiorillo chose the National Gallery of Australia for this performance, which was accompanied by an exceptional video-scape created by the Spanish artist Miguel Valverde.

While Fiorillo performed the familiar mixture of promenades and musical illustrations of the paintings themselves – sometimes horrifying as in or “Catacombae” and sometimes light-hearted, as in “Ballet of the Unhatched Chickens” – Valverde’s virtual walk gave the unnerving impression that some of the paintings were three-dimensional, notably in “Gnomus,” a fine illustration of the artistic potential in this new technological medium.

Another strange visual moment took us so close to the ancient catacombs in “Catacombae” that the skulls seemed to pixilate. In only a few cases did Valverde simply reproduce the original paintings.

Fiorillo matched this fascinating walk through an exhibition with a perfectly timed, sometimes dramatic, sometimes sensitive, piano interpretation of the original Mussorgsky, injecting a grand and formal note into the final section, “The Heroic Gate of Kiev,” as we viewed Hartmann’s architectural plan for the entry to that city.