A stroll through the Palmer Museum of Art might be quite different if an entire orchestra accompanied it.

Douglas Meyer, director of the Pennsylvania Centre Orchestra (PCO), said that's what Modest Mussorgsky had in mind when he wrote Pictures at an Exhibition, which will be featured at the orchestra's concert this weekend.

Under the direction of Meyer, the PCO will perform its second concert of the season, titled "Romantic Pictures," at 4 p.m. Sunday in Esber Recital Hall.

Meyer said Mussorgsky wrote each movement of Pictures at an Exhibition as a tribute to friend and artist Viktor Hartmann.

The entire suite represents a museum visit to view Hartmann's work.

The movements highlight different paintings in the exhibit, including one of a gnome, a garden and city gates.

Mussorgsky includes a promenade between each painting, signifying the visitor's walk between paintings.

Meyer said the PCO will play the U.S. premiere of a new transcription of the Russian composer's piece by Julian Yu.

What makes this transcription different, he said, is the scale of the performance, using only 16 players.

"The idea [Yu] had was to make everything more personal," Meyer said. "It's a privilege that we get to be the first ones playing it."

The 1874 suite was originally a group of 10 solo piano pieces, but has been arranged for an orchestra many times, most famously by composer Maurice Ravel.

Meyer will give a pre-concert talk on the piece at 3:15 p.m. in one of Music Building I's classrooms to explain new additions to the piece that audience members should listen for during the concert.

"There are a lot of things that are new and fresh in this piece," he said.

The orchestra will also perform two pieces by Richard Wagner, one a choral work featuring Penn State voice professor Jennifer Trost.

Trost will be featured in Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, which Wagner wrote for poet Mathilde Wesendonck, whom he had a "crush" on, Meyer said.

Trost said she performed this German piece about a year ago with piano, but this is the first time she will sing it with a full orchestra.

"I love singing with orchestra," she said. "I think you need to have the instruments for all the colors [of the songs]."

Trost, who sang opera for 13 years in Germany before joining the Penn State faculty, said she is comfortable with the song, especially because it is in German.

"[The piece] creates an atmosphere, even if you don't understand the language," she said.