The third act of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Mlada was performed a few times before the entire opera received its premiere. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote Mlada with the intention of using methods he had heard first in Richard Wagner's Ring cycle, particularly the leitmotivs and extravagant orchestration. In his memoirs, he reported that at the first concert of the third act "my orchestral contrivances hit the mark, and the succession of the fantastic coloring of the afterworld, of the flight of shadows and of Mlada's appearance, of the hellishly ominous appearance of Chernobog, of Cleopatra's Oriental bacchanal, and of day awakening with the birds produced a deep impression." Given this success, and the fact that after a promising premiere, Mlada faded fast in the esteem of both critics and the public, it seems natural that Rimsky-Korsakov would try to give the third act new life by making an orchestral arrangement of it. The result was Night on Mount Triglav, which debuted in 1901 at a charity concert for widows and orphans of artists and musicians in Moscow. Rimsky-Korsakov starts in a darkening dream with woodwinds entering sequentially and playing sustained notes at the extreme top of their ranges to contrast with a slow, tonally ambiguous churning in the strings. A dance for ghosts titled "Ronde fantastique," with a melody played on the flute that continually modulates from minor to major before restarting in the minor, also hints at the strangeness to come. Prince Yaromir follows Princess Mlada up the mountain, begging with a long, yearning cello melody to be allowed to come along with her into the spirit world. The mountain turns menacing with a short, sharp scene dominated by brass introducing the "Ronde infernale," a dance for the monsters that surround the demon Chernobog. This starts with a demonic trill in the strings that picks up speed and agitation until Chernobog himself enters, introduced from afar by menacing, widely spaced brass chords and a long, tense tympani crescendo. Chernobog hears the plea of Morena, goddess of the underworld, to use his magic to draw Yaromir's attentions to another, delivered with chirping woodwinds over low horns and double-bass chords that switch the mode from major to minor as they see fit—an effect both luminous and ominous. Kaschei the Deathless then conjures a vision of Cleopatra with an extravagant "Oriental" melody, filled with seductive accidentals and lavish sprays of notes and played on a panpipe, which Rimsky-Korsakov first heard in an Algerian band while writing Mlada in Paris. A crowing cock, represented by the oboe, wakes Yaromir up, and with heroic brass backing him, he resolves to make sense of this vivid, strange dream.

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