Tag Archives: Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

Countdown To Halloween#3

Fantasia (1941) is perhaps Disney animation at its finest. While Disney has done other animations that get praise, this movie is at the top of most lists. There are two sequences of interest in the Halloween season. One is the famous-and scary-Night on Bald Mountain using the music composed by Modest Mussorgsky in 1867. Mussorgsky composed it as a symphonic poem but it was not well liked in his day and never performed. In 1886, five years after his death, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov arranged the music as a fantasy for orchestra. And it is this version that is used rather than the original one composed by Mussorgsky. It was first performed in Saint Petersburg in 1886 to great acclaim and became a concert favorite. For the Night On Bald Mountain chapter in Fantasia,Leopold Stokowski arranged this version based on Rimsky-Korsakov. It has become a classic. And now here it is.[Disclaimer: Our attorneys at Dewey,Cheateam, and Howe want to remind that unless the video is an authentic authorized version by permission of the copyright holder,this public showing may be in violation of copyright law. While this has been posted to YouTube, it does not mean the copyright holder has given permission to be shown on YouTube.]