Solo violoncello THELMA REISS
THE BBC ORCHESTRA
(Section B)
Leader, ARTHUR CATTERALL
Conducted by MALCOLM SARGENT
Rimsky-Korsakov's ' Scheherazade ' is based on some of the episodes from ' The Arabian Nights '. On the advice of his friends he added titles to the four movements of his Suite ' in order to give the hearer a hint as to the direction taken by my own imagination, while I left the filling in of all the details to the mood and fancy of each listener '. But finding that these titles had set people looking too closely for details of definite story-telling in his music, he again suppressed them.
Still, from these titles, from Rimsky-
Korsakov's memoirs, and from remarks made to his friends, we know quite a lot about the pictorial details of ' Scheherazade '. The first movement was entitled ' The Sea and Sindbad's Ship '. The piece as a whole is ' a seascape with white-crested waves.', while the smoothly-sailing ship is suggested by a beautifully tranquil little passage that recurs three times in the course of the movement.
The second movement is ' The Tale of the Kalandar Prince '. Answering fanfares are heard on the brass, and the composer told one of his friends that in the passage that follows * one might see a fight '.
Rimsky-Korsakov was more reticent about the third movement, ' The Young Prince and the Young Princess ', though, ' of course, the beginning sketches the Prince and the middle the Princess '. And this middle part is intended to suggest a procession.
The last movement begins with a ' Festival in Baghdad' and passes imperceptibly and without a break into ' The Shipwreck on the Rock with the Bronze Warrior '.