Discovering the Sunday Composer
April 22nd, 2009 Posted in borodin, classical music, youtube
Last night I heard a Borodin piece for the first time. He’s one of these guys whose music didn’t manage to weave its way into the general-purpose classical music hivemind. That is, if you haven’t deliberately tried to hear his music you probably haven’t heard it at all. Or at least that’s my extrapolation from the statistically significant pool of me.
Here’s the last movement from the 1st string quartet:
I like it. It’s not sappily romantic, and he’s got some good Russian vigor going on.
Plus, it turns out Borodin’s day job was being a scientist — how can I possibly not like him after finding that out?
Tags: borodin, classical music
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:51 am
I would class Borodin as one of those composers who is better known by sound than by name.
For example, if you add to the statistical pool some slightly older people there will be one piece that instantly rings a bell (even if they don’t put Borodin’s name to it). That’s the Nocturne from his Second String Quartet, which also exists in a string orchestra form and, more important, was commandeered for the 1950s musical Kismet. You might find it a bit “sappy” (maybe not), but it’s easy to hear how it became a hit.
Also commandeered for Kismet were two orchestral pops: the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor (look and listen here with Fokine’s original choreography, Gergiev conducting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8C8frqCKKg ) and In the Steppes of Central Asia. (The symphonies are hardly performed at all, at least in English-speaking countries.)
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Borodin might not be known to people just getting into classical music, but he is by no means an obscure composer to moderately experienced classical music fans. Nothing like Zemlinsky, for example.
To somewhat older generations, a lot of his themes are familiar from Kismet, but the young’uns nowadays I suppose don’t know anything about the Broadway musical tradition either. On the other hand, we’re *all* supposed to be intimately familiar with every rock band and hip-hop artist who has come down the pike.
Oh well, tempora mutantur …
May 9th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
An entire Broadway musical, “Kismet,” was lifted from Borodin tunes in the Fifties, and even filmed! The lovely Nocturne from the Second Quartet? “Baubles, Bangles, and Beads.” Borodin is one of those unfortunate chestnuts whom people of my generation (quite wrongly) grew so tired of hearing that he was quietly dropped.
May 17th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Interesting fact: Borodin disapproved of making a career out of music and made a living as a chemistry professor. He wrote music as a “hobby”. I wish I were as good at my hobbies as him.
This fact means that his style of composition is very different to that of other composers in that he is quite oblivious to the trends in classical music being written in Central Europe – trends that influenced other Russian and Eastern European composers. Or so I’ve been told.
Where can I post on here? I have a question I want to ask.
May 17th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
And I just noticed you’d already mentioned he was a scientist. I will have to brush up on my interesting facts. Or just read what people have written before I write.