Is it really this hard to find a recording to buy of the 1867 tone poem? I’m trying to find one, but Amazon, iTunes etc. are hopeless about giving detailed information of arrangements and so I’m worried I’ll end up with the Rimsky-Korsakov drivel. (I just have to be controversial 
)
Any suggestions?
Is there any possible chance you might mean ‘Night on Bald Mountain’?
Please forgive me, I Wiki’ed it and you are right, they are two different pieces. Good Luck!
Try GEMM.
http://www1.gemm.com/c/search.pl?field=TITLE&wild=night+on+bare+mountain&Go!.x=0&Go!.y=0&Go!=Search
There’s always this:
This one includes the un-Rimskified version, but it is SACD only.
Is there a porn movie called A Night on Balled Mountin’? And if not, why not?
Forgive me, but the nature of the post combined with your user name made me giggle.
I’ve found this shop in Edinburgh to be good at enquiries like yours… no database on line, but they know their stuff.
They’re just along from the Lyceum and the Usher Hall, if you know the city.
Not quite the same, but look at the link in my earlier post.
Here are the results from Arkiv’s page. That’s my favorite place for ordering online - they have pretty much everything in print, plus they will burn you discs of stuff that’s currently out of print.
I have that recommended Solti recording of the piece, but on LP - I remember it being OK, but you’ll probably be able to easily find a newer recording in better sound.
Oh… yeah… I remember that now! Part of Buck Naked’s early ouevre. Damn, he was good in that.
Here you go, G Man. Good performance in digital sound, and it’s even available:
[edit] p.s. It’s a hybrid SACD, so it will play on a regular CD player.
Sorry, but Edison didn’t invent the phonograph for another decade after 1867 so you’ll have to settle for a later version. Scott’s phonautograph was early enough to record it but lacked a means of playback. I suppose if a recording had been made and preserved some bright soul could figure out how to play it, though.
They are? Now I’m confused. I always thought “Night on Bald Mountain” and “Night on a Bare Mountain” were just alternative translations of the same Russian, and it looks like Wikipedia backs me up:
But that article also refers to “a later (1886) and very popular ‘fantasy for orchestra’ by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, A Night on the Bare Mountain (Russian: Ночь на лысой горе, Noch’ na lïsoy gore), based almost entirely on Mussorgsky’s themes.” I assume this is what the OP refers to as “the Rimsky-Korsakov drivel,” and that it’s also what you usually get when you buy a recording of “Night on Bald/Bare Mountain by Mussorgsky” (credited to Mussorgsky, but the liner notes may explain that it was arranged/edited/revised/completed/whatever by Rimsky-Korsakov). (Hence the OP’s search for the Mussorgsky original.) Am I correct?
I’ve never heard of it being considered as “by” Rimsky. Mussorgsky himself, after working on various unfinished versions of the Bald Mountain music, suppressed his own final version after Balakirev criticized the score, and never published it or had it performed. After Mussorgsky’s death, Rimsky reworked the piece for publication, “preserving in it all that was best and connected of his own, and adding as little of mine as possible.” He premiered it in 1886. The title page of my copy of the score credits the piece as “Completed and orchestrated by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakoff.”
Night on Bald Mountain and Night on the Bare Mountain are two different translations of the original title; it was become widely agreed that the latter is more correct.
Rimsky-Korsakov edited and re-orchestrated a lot of Mussorgsky’s music, basically sanitizing it to be less odd and radical. Night on Bald Mountain is no exception. The original version is very different in many respects. It’s full original title should be Иванова ночь на лысой горе, “St. John’s Night on the Bare Mountain.” Rimsky-Korsakov’s version (1886) really should almost be considered a new composition based on Mussorgsky’s themes; it’s that different. Regardless, the vast majority of recorded versions available are of the sanitized, Rimsky-Korsakov version, for example, in the movie Fantasia.
Tastes having changes, many people have come to find Mussorgsky’s original to be the more interesting composition. It has been recorded only a few times.
The Salonen recording on DGG which Figaro linked to is indeed the original version, it’s on a hybrid SACD and will play just fine on normal CD players. The Solti version mentioned by Marathon is the Rimsky version.
[edit] I see that a couple people beat me to the punch.
Anyway, it’s silly to say the Rimsky version is “by” Rimsky. Wiki is not really a reliable source, never trust everything you read on a Wiki page. However, that version does indeed differ substantially from the original, in terms of form, order of events, orchestration, and so on.
How come? “Bald mountain” means the same thing in English that it apparently means in Russian: a mountaintop shorn of trees. Why would “bare mountain” be a “more correct” translation? 
Many thanks, all - the Salonen disc is now on order 
I don’t speak Russian. I’m only passing on what I have read. For whatever reason, “Bare” is the preferred translation over “Bald.”
For the record, I prefer “Bald,” actually.