St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain (first version) (Kirkor, McAlister)

Modest Mussorgsky composed "A Night on Bare Mountain" in 1867 within the space of just a few days, producing one of the most audacious and distinctive orchestral works of the nineteenth century. The tone poem depicts a witches' sabbath on Lysa Hora near Kyiv, in which dark spirits dance around the fire god Chernobog before the sound of a village church bell at dawn drives away the evil forces.

During the composer's lifetime, the work remained unperformed. It was only after Mussorgsky's death that his friend Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov substantially revised the score, smoothing over many of the deliberately rough, harmonically provocative features of the original. This polished version went on to achieve worldwide fame, while the original version long languished in its shadow.

The present edition by Kirkor and McAlister places Mussorgsky's original intentions at the forefront, making the untamed wildness of the original readily accessible for the first time. Conductors and ensembles are thus given the opportunity to experience and perform Mussorgsky's uncompromising musical language in its unadulterated form.