Night on Bald Mountain

Description

A piano version of the orchestral work Mussorgsky wrote in 1867. On the eve of St John's Night, witches gather on a bare mountain for a sabbath and scatter at the sound of the dawn bell — a scene drawn from Russian folk belief. The version known today is the one Rimsky-Korsakov revised after the composer's death, and that is also what was used in Disney's Fantasia.

It opens with an uneasy stirring in the bass, and violent themes pile up until the revel reaches its height. A bell then sounds, the witches vanish, day breaks and quiet returns. Over 9,000 notes fill more than ten minutes; reproducing a full orchestra at the keyboard makes the chords thick and spreads the writing across six octaves.

It is physically demanding even among advanced pieces. Long stretches of repeated thick chords will exhaust a hand that forces them: sound them with arm weight rather than striking. To keep it from turning into noise, decide in advance where the summit lies and hold the volume back until then.

A broad collection of standalone piano pieces not belonging to any specific set, offering hundreds of varied character pieces to explore and compare.