Modest Mussorgsky

Yeah, there's one.

This isn't on my list, mind you, but as far as the piano songs, it was Mussorgsky, Pictures and an Exhibition.

If you listen to that piece of music, that was when I was learning how to play that.

I was like, okay, I'm like turning a corner and like playing something.

And to take us out of the episode, I'm going to take full advantage of spooky season by playing you an iconic piece of spooky classical music.

I am, of course, referring to Modest Mussorgsky's composition Night on Bald Mountain.

If you take a look at the Wikipedia page linked in the description, you'll discover that the composition history of this piece is actually quite complicated.

First it was a tone poem, then it became part of an opera ballet that was ultimately never produced or performed, Then it became a piano vocal piece that was part of a comic opera that was unfinished at the time of Mussorgsky's death.

Then, finally, we get the most famous version of this piece, the one that's actually performed, and that is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration of Mussorgsky's work, completed after the composer's death.

Night on Bald Mountain is generally attributed to Mussorgsky, but we should probably also attribute it to Rimsky-Korsakov as well.

This piece of music is generally considered fitting for Halloween, as it is about a group of witches who have gathered to perform magic.

And thanks to Rimsky-Korsakov's atmospheric orchestration, this orchestral fantasy comes alive with a haunting, magical, epic quality that is the perfect way to round out the October reading wrap-up.

And one of its most daring moments came at the very end.

Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Franz Schubert's Ave Maria.

Modest Mussorgsky was a Russian composer born in 1839.

He was fascinated by Russian history, folklore, and the supernatural.

In 1867, he completed an orchestral work depicting a witch's gathering on a mountain.

How does it work?

I think after you sign with certain people, producers or agents or PR agents well some of them tried to push me towards a certain direction but I never really liked that right you can see my like because you mentioned that I've recorded eight albums it's it's it's basically everything I mean I've tried Schumann Schubert I've done Rachmaninoff I've done Ravel I've done Mussorgsky I've done Mozart and Exactly.

So the more they tried to push me towards, you're a German pianist, so maybe play more Beethoven because that's what, Beethoven or even Brahms, because you're from Hamburg, Brahms was from Hamburg.

So people would really like, it would tell a story.

i think with the repertoire that you play them is it just whatever you happen to be playing that night at the concert or do you think really think about what you're going to

play it depends there's pieces that have proven to be really good for school classes and you know if i play with an orchestra for example sometimes just doesn't make sense to play play the concerto that i would play that same night So I try to think of pieces that tell a story that is easily approachable.

Fairly dramatic piano now that you'll be performing, Mussorgsky, towards the end of Pictures a Day exhibition.

But why would you like us, if we're going to go Baba Yaga into the Great Gate of Kyiv, why would you like us to

And then in 1940, Walt Disney took audiences into one of the darkest sequences his studio had ever created, Night on Bald Mountain.

Set to the music of Modest Mussorgsky, the sequence events feature Chernabog, a terrifying demonic figure who summons spirits and creatures of the night, my favorite Disney villain.

The

animation was supervised by Bill Titla, one of Disney's great character animators, and Chernabog remains one of the most visually powerful figures in Disney animation.