Les Ballets Russes, Vol. 8

Featuring

Alejo Pérez
Jermolaj Albiker
Kirill Karabits
SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Sergei Prokofiev

Did you know?

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Composer Biography

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a marine officer, was the youngest member of 'The Five', a group of part-time composers dedicated to creating Russian music.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was a musical fairy tale teller, fascinated by early heathen Russia and its nature worship, earth and sun cults, and magical rituals.

Performer Biography

Kirill Karabits, one of the conductors on this album, studied conducting and composition in Kiev and Vienna, and has been the Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra since 2009/10.

Composer Biography

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, though a dilettante, became a composition professor at 27 and quickly mastered music theory, becoming renowned for his instrumentation skills.

Critical Reception

The Petersburg premiere of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite in January 1916, conducted by the composer, was a major concert scandal, causing a wild uproar among the audience and critics.

Composer Biography

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was synaesthetic, associating sounds with colors; he heard E Major as 'blue', suggesting the sea in Scheherazade is azure.

Composition History

Serge Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets Russes, commissioned Serge Prokofiev to compose something 'particularly Russian' after hearing him play a piano concerto.