Alexander Borodin: String Quartet No. 2, Cello Sonata & Piano Quintet
3/1/2011, 10 Tracks, 1:17:05
Featuring
Václav Remeš
Vlastimil Holek
Josef Klusoň
Michal Kaňka
Jaromír Klepáč
Pražák Quartet
Alexander Borodin
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Composer Biography
Alexander Borodin, the composer, was the illegitimate son of a Caucasian prince and a Russian woman, and was given the name of one of his father's serfs.
Composer Biography
Borodin was a polymath, studying and engaging in music, drawing, model-making, engraving, botany, zoology, anatomy, crystallography, chemistry, and alchemy.
Composer Biography
Borodin was a full professor at the Medical Academy, and his colleagues sometimes complained that music made him waste too much time.
Composition History
The String Quartet no.2 in D major was written in just two months in 1881 as a gift for Borodin's wife, Ekaterina Protopopova, to celebrate twenty years of marriage.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Borodin, always fascinated by oriental-style archaisms, particularly Georgian and Tatar, incorporated these elements into his String Quartet No. 2.
Performer Biography
Michal Kaňka, the cellist on this recording, plays an instrument made by Giovanni Grancino of Milan in 1710.
Composition History
Borodin's Cello Sonata in B minor borrows its initial theme from the fugue of Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonata No.1 in G minor, BWV 1001.
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