Night on the Bare Mountain

Program notes

About the Work

Night on the Bare Mountain (also known as Night on Bald Mountain) is Mussorgsky’s wild, demonic depiction of a witches’ sabbath: a riotous gathering of spirits and dark forces on a mountain top on St John’s Eve. He completed the first version on that very night, 23 June 1867, making it one of the earliest tone poems by any Russian composer: raw, original and full of his characteristic harmonic daring. His mentor Balakirev refused to perform it, and Mussorgsky never heard it played. The work reached the public only after his death, in the brilliant, polished orchestral arrangement Rimsky-Korsakov published in 1886, the version that made it a repertoire favourite and that countless listeners know from Disney’s Fantasia. Rimsky based his ending on a later reworking Mussorgsky made for his opera Sorochintsy Fair, adding the famous church bell and peaceful dawn.

Tonight the LSO plays Mussorgsky’s original 1867 score instead: rawer in its harmonies, eerier in its textures, and without the consoling daybreak. It is a thrilling showpiece, a little over ten minutes of headlong orchestral excitement, sinister and exhilarating, and it makes a high-octane opening to the evening.

What to Listen For

From the first bars, listen for the rushing, swirling strings and shrieking woodwinds that conjure the gathering of witches and demons: music of headlong, malevolent energy. Listen for the stamping dance rhythms, the blaring brass summoning the dark spirits, and the sense of a wild, accelerating frenzy as the sabbath reaches its height.

If you know the familiar Rimsky-Korsakov version, listen for what is different. The harmonies are harsher and stranger, the orchestration less smoothed over, and there is no distant bell and no serene dawn melody to banish the spirits. Mussorgsky’s original stays with the sabbath to the end. Hearing it this way is a chance to meet one of the most vivid pictures in all Russian orchestral music as its composer first imagined it.