IGI,

I had no idea that Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain had a "Sorochintsy Fair version", didn't notice that on the Proms listing, so worth a listen for me.

I first heard Borodin's Polovtsian Dances early this year on old vinyl so another one ticked to listen, and I don't recall ever hearing Prokofiev's piano concerto no. 1, so ticked that one too.

Thomas Ades' Tevot isn't high on my list but I do recall listening/watching to Asyla on Youtube after some other discussion on here or maybe elsewhere, and I was quite taken with it.

So all in all, especially as my wife will be out, I will likely listen tonight if I'm not tempted by the local pub.

John W

After abortive attempts to work this set-piece number into his (abandoned) early opera THE WITCH, and subsequent efforts to reutilise the material in the multi-composer opera MLADA,  Musorgsky had still never had the piece performed. (MLADA was cancelled at its dress rehearsal, and the public never heard the piece in the five-composer version.  Musorgsky's music was cut from two subsequent versions of MLADA,  produced (i) by Minkus - a ballet score - and (ii) Rimsky's opera version).

He finally tried to work it into SOROCHINSKY FAIR, an opera which he didn't manage to finish before his death, although there were extensive amounts of it completed, and still more in sketches.  It's still not clear where in the score the number was to have been inserted (and in fact it's usually left out of versions completed after Musorgsky's death).  

The version which turns up in SOROCHINSKY FAIR has an entirely new title - "The Nightmare Vision of the Peasant Boy",  and isn't called either "Night on a Bare/Bald Mountain" or "The Witches Sabbath on Mount Triglav" or "The Worship Of Chiornobog" (three previous abandoned titles for it).  

[SF is a comedy set in an exaggeratedly "yokel" village in Ukraine, based on a story of the same name by Gogol'. The story is very similar to THE BARTERED BRIDE, and all takes place at the annual Fair - which is reputed to be haunted by a Devil in human form named "Red-Jacket".  When a romantic liaison between the Priest's Son and a married woman is disturbed, the Priest's son leaps out of the first-floor window and runs off.  The villagers - seeing a red-clad man suddenly leaping from the sky - believe it's "Red-Jacket" come to get them.  Presumably he's the "nightmare vision", and this is where the piece ought to come?  But it's pencil-marked for inclusion into Act 1, which must surely be wrong?  Act 1 is the dispute between the Khivrya (the lady with the priestly lover-boy) and the young buck who's come wooing her daughter Parasya... Khivrya decides the boy isn't worthy of her daughter. But the Gypsy Saddler knows the truth about Khivrya's liaison, and blackmails her that unless she lets her daughter marry, he'll spill the beans. All ends happily with a jolly drinking chorus.  There's a lovely aria for Parasya in Act 1 when she thinks she's been dumped.]

The piece conventionally known as "Night On A Bald* Mountain" is actually by Rimsky-Korsakov, arranged from Musorgsky's material from the MLADA version (which Rimsky had "inherited" as the unlucky coordinator of MLADA) plus various other bits and pieces of Mussorgsky's works, and served-up in his own zesty reorchestration.  There's probably good cause to title Musorgsky's version "The Peasant Boy's Nightmare Vision", to distinguish it from Rimsky's.  The Disney film "Fantasia" made the Rimsky version famous, but I forget who is credited as the composer of it.

* it really is "bald", на лисой горе - the word used for male hair-falling. If it had been "bare" (unclothed, naked, void) it would have been на голой горе... but Musorgsky didn't call it that  The title's pictorial - the mountain appears to have a monastic "tonsure", a wooded area with a bald peak.  Walt Disney's artists obliged accordingly

Marbs

Now not so much stream of consciousness, more River Wye....  

   Evyan now dryppyng from a showered computer screen.


Poetry from an empty sky, marbleflugel. Thankyou!

Ron, as Marbs said, 'twas I said that substitute a Y for an I for easier reading but he keeps adding an extraneous E.  Next thing he'll be in a doublet and hose and feathered cap and swapping his S for an F and no doubt swapping Norf Lunnon for The Globe 

Back on topic, we did Mussorgsky to death in Musical Appreciation at The Seminary I can barely listen to it.

  Reiner,

No, I am always open to suggestions, Pictures and Bald Mountain don't get my vote but I will explore more of Modeste willingly, as I am sure many will.

I see we've gone for the old spelling, then

I was in row 4 tonight, even though I didn't get there till 4:50

Sir JT was, well, wonderful. I didn't have a clue what he was singing about, but I was still very drawn in indeed. The Adès was also engrossing, as usual having gone to the talk before the concert helped. Prokofiev: I was astonished by how much the piano sound benefited from the few rows of space. The previous Brahms and Rachmaninov sounded very odd balance-wise (I was in the front row for both these). Lortie enjoyed himself a lot. I was slightly confused as to the need for the soprano at the start of the Borodin, not very cost-effective?