Night On Bald Mountain

Night on Bald Mountain originally had the title St John’s Night on the Bare Mountain. Although Mussorgsky is regarded as a successful composer, most of his works have been rescored because of their insufficient instrumentation. This was the case with this overture, which is nowadays almost always played in the orchestration by Rimsky-Korsakov. Night on Bald Mountain tells the story of a witches’ sabbath on a mountain in the Ukraine and consists of four parts played without breaks: Gathering of the Witches, The Appearance of Satan, The Worship of Satan, and The Witches’ Sabbath.