Borodin: Morskaya tsaryevna (The Princess Of the Sea)

Born in 1888, the Russian soprano Oda Slobodskaya won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second hand clothes shop. Despite having no formal musical training, she travelled, at the age of eighteen, from her hometown of Vilno (then part of the Russian Empire) some 300 miles to St. Petersburg, to audition. She was successful. During the Russian revolution she was ordered to join other singers on obligatory tours to factories and farms to entertain the workers. At the invitation of Diaghilev she starred in the premiere of Stravinsky’s opera Mavra. The impresario Rabinoff organised for her to tour America as star soloist with The Ukranian Chorus and while there she made a successful solo debut at Carnegie Hall in New York. But, as a displaced Russian living abroad when appreciation of the Russian repertoire was minimal, Slobodskaya had difficulty finding a good manager. It was at this point that her career took a most unexpected turn. She was persuaded that as a stop-gap measure to earn some much-needed cash she might utilise her talents in the Variety Theatre rather than the opera house, and so under the assumed name of Odali Careno she made her variety debut in Baltimore in 1928. Dressed in a stunning eau-de-nile gown, she was a sensation, singing a mixture of familiar opera arias, ballads and popular songs.

Slobodskaya’s recordings are few and far between. A handful of Medtner songs with the composer at the piano were recorded early in the 20th century for HMV. In 1938 she recorded eight sides of Russian songs for a limited edition set of four 78s issued by the Rimington van Wyck record shop in Leicester Square. Slobodskaya had been heard on the radio by Mr. Frederick T. Smith, owner of RvW, and he was so overwhelmed by her voice that he paid for the records to be recorded by Decca. They were issued in May 1942 in a limited edition of 2000 in an attractive brown and gold album. Decca recorded her again in 1945 and 1946, and then in 1961.

The recordings are of cult status, much sought after by collectors of great vocal treasures, and this is their first issue on Decca CD. Andrew Dalton has compiled the collection and provided the liner notes, and the booklet is illustrated with all the album jackets as well as illustrations from program booklets, making this a real collector’s item.

This release marks the launch of an Eloquence series of notable recitals of songs and opera arias by some of the great voices of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon.

The only serious Borodin Collection in the market.

Borodin, a member of the “Mighty Handful” (a group of Russian composers with the same creative goals), was a scientist by profession (chemistry), and composed in his spare time. No “amateurish” quality however can be traced in his (relatively small) oeuvre, which abounds in sophisticated, romantic harmonies and melodies, a firm feeling for structure, and a keen sense for “couleur locale”, without too overtly references to Russian folklore.

The set (near complete) presents the 3 symphonies, the complete chamber music, songs, the complete piano music and the famous opera Prince Igor.

Mostly Russian performers: the Moscow Trio, soprano Marianna Tarassova and the great Nikolai Ghiaurov in Prince Igor.

Alexander Porfireyevich Borodin was the illegitimate son of a prince and his mistress, educated at home in St Petersburg by his mother. Although music was an early passion, he discovered his avocation once he matriculated at the city's Medical Surgical Academy. A chemist he became, and a good one, though not without his extracurricular enthusiasms: the head of department once admonished him thus, mid lecture: 'Mr Borodin, busy yourself a little less with songs.

We have left to us a small, eccentrically proportioned body of work which acknowledges the learnt influence of Wagner and Chopin in their respective fields while nonetheless cultivating a personal and nationally inflected voice that was principally nurtured by his fellow member of 'The Mighty Handful', Mily Balakirev.

That voice was first cultivated in abstract orchestral works, which met with mixed acclaim, but the Second Symphony is one of the most popular Russian works of its kind; perhaps less well known these days than half a century ago, but full of Borodin's trademark, lyrical melodies, bending towards a wistfulness and melancholy that never threatens to break into outright hysteria unlike the work of his contemporary Tchaikovsky.

Songs and chamber music are barely known outside his home country, but they are worth discovering, as this unique edition will quickly reveal. And then there's his sprawling, unfinished masterpiece: Prince Igor, work of almost two decades, completed and partly orchestrated by RimskyKorsakov and Glazunov, the brainchild of the Mighty Handful's christener, Vladimir Stasov. This chronicle of a bloody but exuberant period in Russian history makes the most of Borodin's fascination with Russia's outposts, in music of 'oriental' flavour that survives in popular recognition through the bounding energy of the Polovtsian Dances.