I'm big on Russian artists these days, especially the romantics, and yesterday was none other than my old favourite Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's 165th birthday. How time flies when your having fun! To celebrate the great man's birthday, I shall post 'Sherherazade' in its entirety and any one in need of contemplating beauty need only lend their ears to this magnificient piece of eighteenth century escapism.
I knew 'Sherherazade' from my childhood, having had it on tape since I was 12 or so, but it really came to mean something to me when I picked up a Cd in one of Rochester's many second hand book shops. From that day forth I would listen to it on the Strood to Maidstone train, and as I walked up the long hill to the Kent Institute of Art & Design (my legs tremble just thinking about that tedious trek).
After I got back to Denmark, I made a point of buying Rimsky-Korsakov Cd's, hoping to find something as good as 'Sherherazade', but although I found a great mass of excellent work, only one or two came close. Amongst these is the excellent Russian Easter Festival Overture, the enchanting Capriccio Espangnol, the Fantasy on Serbian themes and of course; Snegurochka, whose portrait (as regular readers will recall) was painted by Viktor Vasnetsov and whom one must always recall with pleasure!
Like his contemporaries, Rimsky-Korsakov had a tendency to favour folk and fairy-tale subjects, and was not averse to borrowing and adapting folk music to his own ends.
If this music isn't just about the most beautiful ever written then I don't know what is!
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