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Rimsky-Korsakov and His World
A rare look at the life and music of renowned Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
During his lifetime, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) was a composer whose work had great influence not only in his native Russia but also internationally. While he remains well-known in Russia―where many of his fifteen operas and various orchestral pieces are still in the standard repertoire―very little of his work is performed in the West today beyond Scheherezade and arrangements of The Flight of the Bumblebee . In Western writings, he appears mainly in the context of the Mighty Handful, a group of five Russian composers to which he belonged at the outset of his career. Rimsky-Korsakov and His World finally gives the composer center stage and due attention.
In this collection, Rimsky-Korsakov’s major operas, The Snow Maiden , Mozart and Salieri , and The Golden Cockerel , receive multifaceted exploration and are carefully contextualized within the wider Russian culture of the era. The discussion of these operas is accompanied and enriched by the composer’s letters to Nadezhda Zabela, the distinguished soprano for whom he wrote several leading roles. Other essays look at more general aspects of Rimsky-Korsakov’s work and examine his far-reaching legacy as a professor of composition and orchestration, including his impact on his most famous pupil Igor Stravinsky.
The contributors are Lidia Ader, Leon Botstein, Emily Frey, Marina Frolova-Walker, Adalyat Issiyeva, Simon Morrison, Anna Nisnevich, Olga Panteleeva, and Yaroslav Timofeev.
The Bard Music Festival
Bard Music Festival 2018
Rimsky-Korsakov and His World
Bard College
August 10–12 and August 17–19, 2018
During his lifetime, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) was a composer whose work had great influence not only in his native Russia but also internationally. While he remains well-known in Russia―where many of his fifteen operas and various orchestral pieces are still in the standard repertoire―very little of his work is performed in the West today beyond Scheherezade and arrangements of The Flight of the Bumblebee . In Western writings, he appears mainly in the context of the Mighty Handful, a group of five Russian composers to which he belonged at the outset of his career. Rimsky-Korsakov and His World finally gives the composer center stage and due attention.
In this collection, Rimsky-Korsakov’s major operas, The Snow Maiden , Mozart and Salieri , and The Golden Cockerel , receive multifaceted exploration and are carefully contextualized within the wider Russian culture of the era. The discussion of these operas is accompanied and enriched by the composer’s letters to Nadezhda Zabela, the distinguished soprano for whom he wrote several leading roles. Other essays look at more general aspects of Rimsky-Korsakov’s work and examine his far-reaching legacy as a professor of composition and orchestration, including his impact on his most famous pupil Igor Stravinsky.
The contributors are Lidia Ader, Leon Botstein, Emily Frey, Marina Frolova-Walker, Adalyat Issiyeva, Simon Morrison, Anna Nisnevich, Olga Panteleeva, and Yaroslav Timofeev.
The Bard Music Festival
Bard Music Festival 2018
Rimsky-Korsakov and His World
Bard College
August 10–12 and August 17–19, 2018
384 pages, Hardcover
Published September 11, 2018
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About the author
Marina Frolova-Walker
11 books6 followersMarina Frolova-Walker was born and educated in Moscow, where she studied at the Moscow Conservatoire. She is professor of music history at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Clare College.
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July 8, 2022
As might be expected, a collection of essays by different authors = collection of differing reactions, running the gamut from fascinating to the utterly boring. The Russian composer Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) is the unifying element. While I found the descriptions of Rimsky-Korsakov's views and uses of orientalism, the biting -- and topical -- satire of his final opera ('The Golden Cockerel'), and the development of his one-act 'Mozart and Salieri' of some passing interest, the best parts of the book, from my POV, were the opening and closing 'bookends': selections from the correspondence of the composer with his favorite soprano Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel, with the insights they provide into the day-to-day work of an artist behind-the-scenes (I love the Russian idiom NR-K uses in one letter, "The cats have been scratching my soul," meaning a period of being bothered by some thought or feeling) and the lengthy Afterword, an essay by Leon Botstein, "In Search of Beauty: Autocracy, Music, and Painting in Rimsky-Korsakov's Russia," a wide-ranging discussion of the ethos in which the composer worked, which alone is worth the price of admission. Recommended to those hardy souls with an interest...and the patience to match!
Displaying 1 of 1 review