Night on Bald Mountain Baron Georgiy Mengden, a military friend of the composer. In 1860 Mussorgsky informed Balakirev that he had been commissioned to write one act of an opera on this subject: However, as with the previous project, it is unknown whether any materials were written down, and, if so, whether they were transferred to subsequent projects. Rimsky-Korsakov declares in his memoirs ("Chronicle of My Musical Life") that in the early 1860s Mussorgsky, under the influence of Franz Liszt's "Totentanz", had written a version of the "Bald Mountain" music for piano and orchestra. However, it is believed that Mussorgsky did not hear Liszt's
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