Lyadov apparently had a thing for witches: in his brief and desultory career as a composer, he wrote not one but two tone poems for orchestra depicting witches. The first is Baba-Yaga from 1904, a short and pseudo-spooky "picture from a Russian folk tale," and the second is Kikimora, a longer but still pseudo-spooky folk tale. Both are scored for full, late Romantic orchestra with a huge percussion section, including the obligatory xylophone, a prerequisite for evoking rattling skeletons. Like Baba-Yaga, the main body of Kikimora is a Presto replete with chromatic scales, woodwinds wails, and brass blasts. But unlike Baba-Yaga, Kikimora has a dark and moody Adagio introduction with the bleakness and despair of Rachmaninov and the harmonic vagueness of Debussy. Thus, although Kikimora is for the most part merely a re-write of Baba-Yaga, its introduction shows that Lyadov could be more than a procurer for witches.

© James Leonard, Rovi