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Uploaded by mufasa101 on October 5, 2019 at 3:34 pm
Scheherazade
Prolific Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, (1844–1908), is perhaps best known for his orchestral compositions. He wrote 15 operas, as well as a number of symphonies, choral music, and songs.
Rimsky-Korsakov was born into an aristocratic family who, though realizing their son had musical ability, did not take it seriously because being a composer was not considered suitable for someone of their social standing. Based on his parents' wishes, he studied for a career in the Imperial Russian Navy. While at school, he took piano lessons and became convinced as his studies progressed that he could make a career in music, even though he lacked the formal music training of a conservatory.
He began composing his first symphony while at sea in the Russian navy. As his naval duties lessened, he found more time to compose. In 1871, he was invited to become a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and in 1873 resigned his naval commission, devoting himself to teaching and composing. Ironically, the more he taught, the more he realized his need for more professional training. He began to study harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration in earnest. He is considered a highly skilled orchestrator.
In his autobiography, My Musical Life, Rimsky-Korsakov recalled that although he had been pleased with the Fantasy on Russian Themes, for violin and orchestra, which he had composed in 1886, he wanted to write another virtuoso piece for violin and orchestra, this time on Spanish themes. However, after making a sketch of it he gave up that idea and decided instead to compose an orchestral piece with virtuoso instrumentation.
Scheherazade, also spelled Sheherazade, is an orchestral suite that was inspired by the collection of largely Middle Eastern and Indian tales known as “The Thousand and One Nights” (or The Arabian Nights). Exemplary of the late 19th-century taste for program music -or, music with a story to tell- the piece evokes an image of Scheherazade, the young wife of the sultan Schahriar (Shahryar), telling tales to her husband to forestall his plan to kill her. Colorful and highly varied in mood, the work has a recurring violin solo that represents Scheherazade herself and a deep, ponderous theme that corresponds to the sultan. The composition was completed in 1888, and it premiered on November 3 of that year, in Saint Petersburg, with the composer himself conducting.
Scheherazade derives its themes from the evocative stories of characters, such as Sindbad the Sailor and the woodcutter Ali Baba that became widely known in Europe during the 1800s. Rimsky-Korsakov, renowned as a virtuoso of orchestral coloration, recognized in these tales an ideal realm in which to give free rein to his abilities. He subsequently created a work that he himself described as “an orchestral suite closely knit by the community of its themes and motifs, yet representing, as it were, a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images.”
The suite is structured in four movements, which originally were untitled but later were given names by Rimsky-Korsakov’s former student Anatoly Lyadov. The second movement, “The Story of the Kalandar Prince,” opens with Scheherazade’s now familiar violin line, which dissolves into animated march-like passages, intermittently interwoven with suggestions of the sultan’s theme.
Although the names of the movements derive from the original stories from The Thousand and One Nights, Rimsky-Korsakov always insisted that the music was not intended as an exact portrayal of any particular tale or any part of the collection. Other than the ominous opening theme of the sultan and a recurring sinuous violin solo that is intended to suggest Scheherazade herself, no character motifs are used in the work. “In composing Scheherazade, wrote the composer in his memoirs, I meant these themes to direct but slightly the hearer’s fancy on the path which my own fancy had traveled, and to leave more minute and particular conceptions to the will and mood of each. All I had desired was that the hearer, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that it is beyond doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders and not merely four pieces played one after the other and composed on the basis of themes common to all the four movements".
Sheherazade (symphonic suite), Op.35, The Story of the Kalandar Prince (Lento. Andantino)
Performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra
Riccardo Muti, Conductor
Norman Carol, Violin
Prolific Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, (1844–1908), is perhaps best known for his orchestral compositions. He wrote 15 operas, as well as a number of symphonies, choral music, and songs.
Rimsky-Korsakov was born into an aristocratic family who, though realizing their son had musical ability, did not take it seriously because being a composer was not considered suitable for someone of their social standing. Based on his parents’ wishes, he studied for a career in the Imperial Russian Navy. While at school, he took piano lessons and became convinced as his studies progressed that he could make a career in music, even though he lacked the formal music training of a conservatory.
He began composing his first symphony while at sea in the Russian navy. As his naval duties lessened, he found more time to compose. In 1871, he was invited to become a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and in 1873 resigned his naval commission, devoting himself to teaching and composing. Ironically, the more he taught, the more he realized his need for more professional training. He began to study harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration in earnest. He is considered a highly skilled orchestrator.
In his autobiography, My Musical Life, Rimsky-Korsakov recalled that although he had been pleased with the Fantasy on Russian Themes, for violin and orchestra, which he had composed in 1886, he wanted to write another virtuoso piece for violin and orchestra, this time on Spanish themes. However, after making a sketch of it he gave up that idea and decided instead to compose an orchestral piece with virtuoso instrumentation.
Scheherazade, also spelled Sheherazade, is an orchestral suite that was inspired by the collection of largely Middle Eastern and Indian tales known as “The Thousand and One Nights” (or The Arabian Nights). Exemplary of the late 19th-century taste for program music -or, music with a story to tell- the piece evokes an image of Scheherazade, the young wife of the sultan Schahriar (Shahryar), telling tales to her husband to forestall his plan to kill her. Colorful and highly varied in mood, the work has a recurring violin solo that represents Scheherazade herself and a deep, ponderous theme that corresponds to the sultan. The composition was completed in 1888, and it premiered on November 3 of that year, in Saint Petersburg, with the composer himself conducting.
Scheherazade derives its themes from the evocative stories of characters, such as Sindbad the Sailor and the woodcutter Ali Baba that became widely known in Europe during the 1800s. Rimsky-Korsakov, renowned as a virtuoso of orchestral coloration, recognized in these tales an ideal realm in which to give free rein to his abilities. He subsequently created a work that he himself described as “an orchestral suite closely knit by the community of its themes and motifs, yet representing, as it were, a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images.”
The suite is structured in four movements, which originally were untitled but later were given names by Rimsky-Korsakov’s former student Anatoly Lyadov. The second movement, “The Story of the Kalandar Prince,” opens with Scheherazade’s now familiar violin line, which dissolves into animated march-like passages, intermittently interwoven with suggestions of the sultan’s theme.
Although the names of the movements derive from the original stories from The Thousand and One Nights, Rimsky-Korsakov always insisted that the music was not intended as an exact portrayal of any particular tale or any part of the collection. Other than the ominous opening theme of the sultan and a recurring sinuous violin solo that is intended to suggest Scheherazade herself, no character motifs are used in the work. “In composing Scheherazade, wrote the composer in his memoirs, I meant these themes to direct but slightly the hearer’s fancy on the path which my own fancy had traveled, and to leave more minute and particular conceptions to the will and mood of each. All I had desired was that the hearer, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that it is beyond doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders and not merely four pieces played one after the other and composed on the basis of themes common to all the four movements”.
Sheherazade (symphonic suite), Op.35, The Story of the Kalandar Prince (Lento. Andantino)
Performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra
Riccardo Muti, Conductor
Norman Carol, Violin
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A MASTERPIECE…!!!!!!!!!!!!!