Borodin: String Quintet in F minor

Comprehensive booklet notes.

Recording made in 1995.

All Russian players who are steeped in experience of this repertoire.

Very few collections of the Borodin chamber works are available.

Alexander Borodin (1833–87) was one of those composers who did something else for a living. He was a highly respected research chemist who published over 40 scientific works and composed in his spare time. Borodin met Balakirev in 1862, and became part of the collective of Russian composers called ‘The Mighty Handful’ – with Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky and Rimsky Korsakov. Out of the five, Borodin was the most disposed to chamber music, and had composed quite a significant body of work before his meeting with Balakirev. These works are of an astonishing quality, and it is remarkable to consider that he was almost self taught. He studied the works of Spohr, Onslow, and Boccherini as a youngster, and as a keen cellist, the chamber works of these composers no doubt provided the inspiration for his String Quintet – probably the first by a Russian composer.

The undoubted masterpiece though is his Second String Quartet, one of the most famous and best loved works in the genre. The famous thirdmovement Notturno was used for the song ‘And this is my Beloved’ from the 1953 Broadway musical Kismet, based entirely on Borodin’s music. For those who know only his Second Symphony, and the dances from his opera Prince Igor, this set provides a fascinating opportunity to explore another aspect of this fabulously gifted composer, containing many lesser known works that deserve to be better known.

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.