Night on Bald Mountain work until 1866, by which time he was planning the orchestral tone poem "St. John's Eve on Bald Mountain" (see below). No trace of a work for piano and orchestra has survived outside Rimsky-Korsakov's recollections, so it is assumed that the score has been lost, or, more likely, that it never existed. In 1866 Mussorgsky wrote to Balakirev expressing a desire to discuss his plans for "The Witches", his informal name for his "Bald Mountain" music. In early June 1867, he began composing the orchestral version of the piece. The score is inscribed with the following details: Conceived in 1866.
Night on Bald Mountain by [[V. Bessel and Co.]]]] Rimsky-Korsakov's edition was completed in 1886, and published in the same year by [[V. Bessel and Co.]]. It received its premiere on 15 October 1886 in [[St. Petersburg]]'s Kononov Hall, performed by the orchestra of the [[Russian Symphony Concerts]]. Rimsky-Korsakov conducted the performance himself, and gives the following account of it in his memoirs, "Chronicle of My Musical Life" (1909): The orchestration of "A Night on Bald Mountain", which had baffled me so long, was finished for the concerts of [the 1886/87] season, and the piece, given by me at the first concert in a