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
