Baba Yaga is an enigmatic or ambiguous character from Slavic folklore who has two opposite roles. In some motifs she is described as a repulsive or ferocious-looking old woman who fries and eats children, while in others she is a nice old woman, who helps out the hero. She is often associated with forest wildlife. Her distinctive traits are flying around in a mortar, wielding a pestle, and dwelling deep in the forest in a hut standing on chicken legs.

Pictures at an Exhibition is a piano suite in ten movements, plus a recurring and varied Promenade theme, written in 1874 by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. It is a musical depiction of a tour of an exhibition of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, following his sudden death in the previous year. Each movement of the suite is based on an individual work, some of which are lost.