ExclusiveRimsky-Korsakow: Scheherazade, Op. 35 - III. The Young Prince and The Young Princess

【Classical music and nature 古典音樂小站】Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakow: Scheherazade, Op. 35 - III. The Young Prince and The Young Princess. This beautiful piece was preserved by European Archive. It has Creative Commons license (Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal) and is provided through www.musopen.org.

Rimsky-Korsakov came from the distinguished Rimsky-Korsakov family, whose male members traditionally served in the military, particularly in the Russian navy. His parents, however, were also very interested in music and recognised and encouraged his musical talent.

In 1856, he began his military and academic training in the Naval Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg, which he completed in 1862.

At the cadet school, Rimsky-Korsakov continued his piano lessons, but was mainly interested in opera and the instruments used in it. As a 13-year-old, he wrote the following letter to his uncle:

"Dearest Uncle! Imagine my joy, today I am going to the theatre! I will see Lucia! I will hear the huge orchestra and tam-tam! and see the conductor waving his little stick! In the orchestra there are 12 violins, 8 violas, 6 cellos, 6 double basses, 3 flutes, 8 clarinets, 6 horns and all this stuff."
Almas (on which Rimsky-Korsakov undertook his world trip)

In the autumn of 1859, he received a new piano teacher, Théodore Camille, who introduced him to the composers Balakirev and Cui. Encouraged by his supporters, he began to write his first work, a symphony in E-flat minor. However, he was only able to complete the work in 1865, because after completing his training, he was initially assigned to the warship ‘Almas’ for three years. At the end of 1865, Balakirev finally performed the work in St. Petersburg. In the following years, Rimsky-Korsakov increasingly occupied himself with Russian folk music and Old Russian traditions. When he set the Russian playwright Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky‘s fantastic play Snegurotschka (’Snow Maiden") to music as an opera in 1880, he spent this time in a state of extraordinary excitement, as he later described:

"praying to nature – to a crooked old tree stump, to a willow or centuries-old oak, to the forest stream, to the lake... or to the cockerel's crow that chases away the witchcraft of the night... It sometimes seemed to me that animals , birds, even trees and flowers, know more about magic and fantasy than people do... I believed in all this warmly, like a child..., and in those minutes the world seemed closer to me, more understandable, and I was somehow merged with it!"
In July 1871, he became professor of instrumentation and composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and on 30 June Julian. / 12 July 1872 Gregorian. he married Nadezhda Nikolaevna Purgold, a composer and excellent pianist. From 1874 to 1881 he was director of the Free School of Music and worked as a conductor and teacher. His prominent academic position and his great popularity made him one of the most influential representatives of the so-called ‘Mighty Handful’. He also played an important role in the editing and dissemination of Mussorgsky's works, which he sought to make accessible to the public in a more polished form. His compositional style was influenced by Glinka and Balakirev, Berlioz and Liszt. His most famous students included Glazunov, Grechaninov, Stravinsky, Witold Maliszewski and Prokofiev; his influence can also be felt in the orchestral works of Ravel, Debussy, Dukas and Ottorino Respighi.
In 1904, he was elected an associate member of the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.
In the summer of 1908, Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov died of a heart attack at his country house.

This video was taken just after the sun had crossed the mountain range, illuminating these small fogs. It was shot by Simone Schlegel on the Schallenberg Pass in Switzerland and edited by Wenjing Ma.





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