THE BIRMINGHAM STUDIO ORCHESTRA
Conducted by FRANK CANTELL
LIKE many of his colleagues in the Russian school of composers, Cui was an amateur. His actual job in life was soldiering, and he was for a number of years Professor of Military Engineering at one of the Army training schools. But his adoption as a member of the Russian school has this special interest, that he was really a Frenchman, or, at any rate, half French, by descent. His father was one of Napoleon's officers who was left in Russia during the disastrous retreat from Moscow. He settled down there, and married a Lithuanian lady, adopting as his home the country which his Emperor had failed to conquer.