Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov: Sheherazade (Tale of Tsar Saltan, Suite for orchestra, 1-3 Op.57)

Benoit Gravel

Published on Feb 12, 2015

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky Korsakov is born March 18th 1844 and died June 21th 1908. He was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as ”The Five” He was a master of orchestration. His best-known orchestral compositions—Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade—are staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his 15 operas. Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy tale and folk subjects. Rimsky-Korsakov believed, as did fellow composer Mily Balakirev and critic Vladimir Stasov, in developing a nationalistic style of classical music. This style employed Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschewed traditional Western compositional methods. However, Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871

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