Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
1844-1908

Performance Dates
January 18/20/21 - Scheherazade

Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer and one of the group known as The Five. He composed his Capriccio espagnol in 1887, and during the following year he produced both Sheherazade and the Russian Easter Festival Overture. These three most famous of his works thus came into being in a very short time. Though he could not know that they were to be the last major orchestral works he would compose, he was aware of the excellence of achievement this group of pieces represents. He wrote in his memoirs that they “close a period of my work, at the end of which my orchestration had attained a considerable degree of virtuosity and warm sonority.” He was right to be proud of his orchestral abilities. Largely self taught, he had made himself one of the finest orchestrators in the world, a master at the art of mating instrumental forces to melody and harmony in colorful and fitting ways – a talent he fostered in his most famous pupil, Stravinsky. His textbook Principals of Orchestration shares his secrets with others and is still pertinent today. Easter is an important festival in all Christian churches, and the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Easter, which Russians in Rimsky Korsakov’s day called “the Bright Holiday,” with especially colorful pageantry and music.

Last Updated: 01/19/2007