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COMPACT DISC
This excellent two-disc compilation by Decca contains practically everything of importance that Borodin ever composed short of a complete recording of Prince Igor. It’s a well known fact that music was only part of Borodin’s life’s work and the lesser part at that. His larger vocation was in chemistry and he was very successful in that field where his work with aldehydes brought him international attention. He taught chemistry at the St. Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy where he showed great concern for his students (an unusual thing at that time) and as a champion of women’s rights was instrumental in opening the Academy to women. It’s a wonder he had any time for music and we can all be thankful that he did. Still, I am always a bit disappointed that he did not give all his time and talent to music. After all, the world had many chemists but only one Borodin.He met Balakirev in the early 1860’s when Balakirev and the critic Vladimir Stasov were looking for young composers to found a purely Russian school of music away from the European influence of Anton Rubinstein and his Conservatory. He was the last to join the group Stasov dubbed “The Mighty Handful” and followed Balakirev’s advice to write a symphony, the same advice he had given Rimsky-Korsakov (both in 1862). Both Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov broke with Balakirev in time over his domineering personality and went their own way but he was an important inspiration to the two in their early years. It’s interesting as well that both Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov married women who were excellent pianists and deeply interested in music themselves.All three of Borodin’s symphonies are here and the Second Symphony is one of the major Russian symphonies of the nineteenth century. It is inspired by medieval and legendary Russian heroes and depicts a large gathering of them in all their splendor. It opens with great ceremony and its Andante includes a suggestion of an old Russian minstrel entertaining the assembled heroes followed by a great celebration. The First Symphony gets ignored even though it’s a really good work for a composer’s first. It has an exciting, heroic first movement and a beautiful Andante that midway takes off to soaring heights. It was one of the first big orchestral works from Russia to be heard in Western Europe in a performance arranged by Liszt. The Third Symphony was worked on in his last years and left incomplete and in a disorganized state. It was pieced together and scored by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov and from what we have here would have been a major work with an opening movement full of Russian folk song and a dynamic scherzo.Borodin wrote more abstract music than programmatic but for the 25th anniversary of the reign of Tsar Alexander II he composed In the Steppes of Central Asia, meant to accompany a living tableaux of the scene for a program which would include other similar scenes by practically every important Russian composer. The production never happened but we have the beautiful miniature tone poem with its interwoven Russian and Asiatic melodies that so successfully paints its picture in under seven minutes.Balakirev didn’t approve of chamber music but both Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov wrote it anyway. Borodin had actually written a fair amount of it in the 1850’s but it’s never recorded and is probably the kind of youthful compositions most composers suppress. It was with the two string quartets that Borodin showed a real mastery of the medium and the second is one of the most popular works in the chamber repertoire. The melodies are pure Borodin, in a characteristic style that could never be taken for anyone else. The warm, deep feelings of the music make it clear how much he loved his wife, to whom it was dedicated. Two of the melodies were popularized in the 1940’s by Robert Wright and George Forrest in their musical, Kismet. No matter what you think of this they did bring an awareness of Borodin’s music to a huge number of people who would likely have never heard of him. At least some would have familiarized themselves with the source, one imagines.Then there is Prince Igor, a project which occupied Borodin for most of his life and was worked on in fits and starts. When he suddenly died of a massive heart attack at a grand ball given by the Medical Academy in 1887, Prince Igor was left unfinished and in a shambles with large sections in piano score only. Unfortunately Borodin was known for being absent-minded and disorganized, possibly due to his dual career. Again Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov stepped in to put it in order and completed and orchestrate it from Borodin’s sketches. The overture was created by Glazunov from his memory of Borodin’s playing it on the piano. What emerged was still recognizably Borodin and a major opera within Russia. The famous Polovtsian Dances which close Act II have travelled around the world. They are done here with the full chorus, as they should be, and are one of the great extravaganzas of Russian opera. Two arias from the opera including Khan Konchak’s are also included.Decca has chosen well from their large catalog to assemble this collection. It included many noted conductors and though mostly recorded in the early to mid sixties sounds wonderful. The Borodin Quartet performs the String Quartet No. 2 which they re-recorded in 1980 for Melodiya and EMI. The collection even includes one of Borodin’s songs, For the Shores of Your Far-Off Native Land. All in all it’s a great collection of Borodin’s Music.