Conductor, Charles Groves
Arranged by Haslingden Arts Club. From the Public Hall, Haslingden
This version of Mussorgsky's ' Night on the Bare Mountain ' is practically a composition by Rimsky-Korsakov based on Mussorgsky's material. It portrays a witches' sabbath on a mountainside. Towards the end a church bell is heard from the valley below, and. as dawn breaks, the evil spirits scatter and flee. Mussorgsky himself had composed his ' witch ' music in 1867 and used it several times: as an ' orchestral picture' and in his operas Mlada and Sorochintsy Fair. But none of these forms seems to have satisfied him.