Mussorgsky: A Night on the Bare Mountain (Walpurgisnacht, Walpurgis Night, Night on the Bald Mountain, St. John's Night, Una notte sul Monte Calvo)

Leonard Bernstein talks, plays the piano, leads his New York Philharmonic and even sings to present his view of 'Humor in Music'.

Owing in large part to their exotic inspiration, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade and Aram Khachaturian’s Gayane are among the most beautiful and most frequently performed Russian and Soviet works of music. The creator of Sheherazade, who as a young navy officer travelled the oceans, was enchanted by the Oriental collection of stories and folk tales The One Thousand and One Nights.

Yet Rimsky-Korsakov’s colourful instrumentation also gave lustre to another work, Mussorgsky’s fantasia Night on Bald Mountain, with its dramatic depiction of a wild Sabbath of witches. Khachaturian’s ballet suite Gayane includes Armenian folk melodies, which were the composer’s most powerful inspiration and undoubtedly helped to earn the piece global popularity (the celebrated Sabre Dance is one of the most frequently played compositions worldwide). The recordings of all three works were made between 1953 and 1955, the paramount period of Zdeněk Chalabala, the chief conductor of Prague’s National Theatre Opera at the time. The great imagination with which he tells stories, combined with the inimitable timbre of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, makes these recordings truly remarkable. Yet another treasure appearing on CD for the first time…

Bringing magic and music together in a fun, interactive collection this compilation encourages children to explore their imaginations, expand their minds with fun facts and stories and listen to some of the world’s greatest Classical Music. The collection features Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Flight of the Bumble Bee and many other well-loved favourites. Children will be invited to see how sorcerers, magical toys, wondrous heroes and fantastical creatures come to life in Classical Music.

A fully illustrated 32 page booklet presents a mystical journey through magical music encouraging the young ready to hear, see and recreate as much as possible. The text is designed to be read either by an older child of 5 or 6 or with an adult for the younger children. The writer is Sarah Breeden noted for the fun and informative programmes she has written for the BBC Children’s Proms.

Following the success of their first release on ONYX, the BSO and Karabits turn to the Ukraine for the second release in the orchestra’s partnership with ONYX.

Tchaikovsky’s most overtly nationalistic symphony, his 2nd known as the ‘Little Russian’ uses folk songs from the Ukraine, and is the nearest the composer came to the musical and cultural ideals proposed by ‘The Mighty Handful’. This group of composers – Borodin, Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui and Mussorgsky rejected the Western influences on Russian culture, and looked to the music, folklore and history of Mother Russia for inspiration. Mussorgsky, probably the most naturally gifted of this group composed A Night on the Bare Mountain in 1867, and the original version heard here was not published until 1968. It is a striking work, quite shocking in it’s modernity, and a world away from Rimsky’s better known re-composition of the piece. The suite Pictures at an Exhibition was written for piano in 1874 and inspired by paintings by his friend Victor Harmann displays Mussorgsky’s great gift of graphic evocation. Ravel’s masterly orchestration was made in 1922.

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (b. 1931) is the last living survivor of a great Russian quartet of conductors consisting of Mravinsky, Kondrashin and Svetlanov. He was the highly distinguished principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1978 to 1981, an exciting period in the orchestra’s history, faithfully captured here.

The Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev recordings have never been issued before on CD, while the Mussorgsky was released on the now defunct BBC Radio Classics series over 15 years ago.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4 from the 1979 Leeds Music Festival is one of the conductor’s most inspired performances, rivalling Mravinsky in his celebrated accounts. Rozhdestvensky treats it as a broad tragedy of the highest order without sentimentalising it.

Rozhdestvensky’s championship of Mussorgsky produces a rarity – the version of A Night on a Bare Mountain used in the composer’s Sorochinsky Fair, which includes a chorus and a bass-baritone (David Wilson-Jones). This version, from the 1981 BBC Proms, is sung in English.

Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges Suite was given on a Far East tour in Kurashiki, Japan in 1981 and benefits from Rozhdestvensky’s long experience with ballet and, in this performance, his fiery impetus.

On the 4th of June 2009 the Wiener Philharmoniker treat the Viennese public with a free open-air concert on the grounds of Schönbrunn Palace

The impressive historical setting of Schönbrunn Palace and its beautiful baroque gardens, a UNESCO world cultural heritage site, form a unique backdrop for this Summer Night concert

150,000 visitors were present in the audience, and the concert was broadcast world-wide in more than 50 countries.