If
you attended the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s Lumenocity concert in 2014,
you may remember the “Polovtsian Dances” by Alexander Borodin (1833–1887) that
accompanied the Charley Harper tribute. This famous work comes from Borodin’s
only opera, Prince Igor, a work he
dabbled with for eighteen years and then left unfinished at the time of his
death. While the “Polovtsian Dances” is quite popular and often played by
orchestras around the globe, the opera itself is rarely performed outside of
Russia.
Borodin
was a member of what we call the Mighty Handful, a group of late 19th-century
Russian composers who rejected Western styles in favor of more traditional
Russian approaches. Also in the group were Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, César Cui,
Modest Mussorgsky, and Mily Balakirev. Because Borodin’s main career was as a
chemist and he only composed on the side, it took him quite a while to get
through many of his works. That explains why his opera based on the medieval
epic The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,
took years of work, and remained incomplete at the end of his life.
But
what ever happened to Prince Igor and
how is it that we have a complete product today? Find out when you join me next
time in Clef Notes.
