Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by René Leibowitz

I - Assembly of the witches, their chatter and gossip. Allegro feroce - Satan's cortege. Poco più sostenuto - Allegro feroce - Poco più sostenuto - Black mass. Tempo I - Sabbath. Sostenuto pesante: 0:00

After the death both Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, several conductors and composers made their own versions of the famous symphonic poem "Night on Bald Mountain". Lebowit'z versions can be count as the fifth one after Stokowski's version for the film "Fantasia" (1940). Leibowitz (a reputated conductor and composer in the postwar era) made his own version of the famous symphonic poem after an extensive research of all the available Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov materials.

However it strongly bears resemblance to Leopold Stokowski's version and he, too, claimed to have consulted the original sources. Leibowitz's wrote a complete new ending and made great changes on the orchestration; percussion instruments are brought up front, there's even two wind machines between the end of the witches' Sabbath and the opening of the "Matins bell" conclusion. Like Stokowski's version too, the trumpet call dissapears from the score.

The piece opens with fast notes from the strings in crescendo-decrescendo, which leads to the energetic and turbulent main theme over the rhythm of the snare drum, representing the gathering of demons and witches. A transition, featuring the xylophone leads us to the march motif, with chernobog (or satan) appearing with his infernal entourage. Music rises in a series of explosive climaxes, culminating in a vulgar variation of the dance theme, representing the orgy of chernobog. Notable is the ausence of the trumpet call of Korsakov's version. The theme transforms into a dance that quickly goes through an accelerando.

The turbulent main theme is recapitulated in a varied way, along with the secondary dance theme. The wind machines appear in a decrescendo transition, leading to the solemn chimes of the tubular bells, representing the arrival of the morning of sabbath and the chimes of the near church. The demons and witches disperse as the sun rises. The dance theme is transformed in a lyrical slow theme, followed by beautiful solos from the clarinet and the flute. Instead of korsakov's lyrical coda, the coda begins with blows from the bass drum, leading to a dissonant crescendo, concluding the work in a forceful way.

Picture: "Czarnybog Bialybog" (2017) by the Polish artist Marek Hapon.

Musical analysis done by myself, source: [ Ссылка ]

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