Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade - Legendary Recording of a Stunning Youth Orchestra in Hi-Res Audio

Gimnazija Kranj Christmas Concert Series - Anniversary Edition Series.
In this series, I am going to re-upload some of the milestones from our performing and recording productions in the last 15 years. Our lead master technician Mr. Iztok Zupan remastered all of our analog audio recordings in amazing digital Hi-Res audio landscape. He used sophisticated rerecording processes, rubidium clock processes and some other exotic black magic for one of the most superior sound, you can get it on youtube.

This recording is particularly legendary. Our balance engineer Matjaž Culiberg from National Radio did amazing sound design. The golden generation of the orchestra played this milestone recording with never-seen-before mastery and artistic excellence. Many of those musicians are playing now in the best world symphonic orchestras: Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Berlin Philarmonic Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Tonhalle Zürich, Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna State Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Kremerata Baltica, Bavarian State Opera and other renowned orchestras around the Globe. Our master engineer Iztok Zupan carefully inspected this beautiful audio material and did a spectacular re-recording audio miracle. Enjoy this legendary and one of the best performances on Youtube.

Maestro Nejc Bečan is a conductor
solo violin: concert master Matjaž Bogataj

This orchestral work combines two features typical of Russian music and of Rimsky-Korsakov in particular: dazzling, colorful orchestration and an interest in the East, which figured greatly in the history of Imperial Russia, as well as orientalism in general. The name "Scheherazade" refers to the main character Shahrazad of the One Thousand and One Nights. It is considered Rimsky-Korsakov's most popular work.

During the winter of 1887, as he worked to complete Alexander Borodin's unfinished opera Prince Igor, Rimsky-Korsakov decided to compose an orchestral piece based on pictures from One Thousand and One Nights as well as separate and unconnected episodes. After formulating musical sketches of his proposed work, he moved with his family to the Glinki-Mavriny dacha, in Nyezhgovitsy along the Cherementets Lake (near present-day Luga, in Leningrad Oblast). The dacha where he stayed was destroyed by the Germans during World War II.

During the summer, he finished Scheherazade and the Russian Easter Festival Overture. Notes in his autograph orchestral score show that the former was completed between June 4 and August 7, 1888. Scheherazade consisted of a symphonic suite of four related movements that form a unified theme. It was written to produce a sensation of fantasy narratives from the Orient.

Initially, Rimsky-Korsakov intended to name the respective movements in Scheherazade "Prelude, Ballade, Adagio and Finale". However, after weighing the opinions of Anatoly Lyadov and others, as well as his own aversion to a too-definitive program, he settled upon thematic headings, based upon the tales from The Arabian Nights.

The composer deliberately made the titles vague so that they are not associated with specific tales or voyages of Sinbad. However, in the epigraph to the finale, he does make reference to the adventure of Prince Ajib. In a later edition, Rimsky-Korsakov did away with titles altogether, desiring instead that the listener should hear his work only as Oriental-themed symphonic music that evokes a sense of the fairy-tale adventure, stating: All I desired was that the hearer if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that it is beyond a doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders and not merely four pieces played one after the other and composed on the basis of themes common to all the four movements.

He went on to say that he kept the name Scheherazade because it brought to everyone’s mind the fairy-tale wonders of Arabian Nights and the East in general.

The work consists of four movements:

I. The Sea and Sinbad's Ship
Largo e maestoso – Lento – Allegro non troppo – Tranquillo (E minor – E major)

II. The Kalandar Prince
Lento – Andantino – Allegro molto – Vivace scherzando – Moderato assai – Allegro molto ed animato (B minor)

III. The Young Prince and The Young Princess
Andantino quasi allegretto – Pochissimo più mosso – Come prima – Pochissimo più animato (G major)

IV. Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman
Allegro molto – Lento – Vivo – Allegro non troppo e maestoso – Tempo come I (E minor – E major)


Sound design: Matjaž Culiberg
Flowers: Yasmin d.o.o
Light: Janez Kocjan
Scenography: Žiga Misjak
Master and rerecording processes: Iztok Zupan, Klopotec
www.klopotec.si
concert director and broadcast director: Primož Zevnik, PPZ production