Rimsky-korsakov: The Maid Of Pskov / Fairy Tale

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Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)The Maid of Pskov: Overture & Entr'actesThe Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh:Symphonic SuiteFairy Tale, Op.29Fantasia on Serbian Themes, Op.6 In common with other nationalist composers,Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov began his musical career as an amateur,during service in the navy. In 1872 he resigned from the service and thereafterspent a dozen years as Inspector of Naval Bands, a civilian position speciallycreated for him. This led him to develop a particular interest ininstrumentation, an aspect of music that had long fascinated him. He owed much,at first, to Balakirev, the self-appointed leader of the Russian nationalistcomposers Cui, Borodin and Mussorgsky, but came to regret their lack oftechnical competence, a defect he sought to remedy when he came to revise workleft unfinished by Mussorgsky and Borodin after their deaths. By his ownefforts he acquired a sound technique, particularly in orchestration. His earlyassociation with Balakirev continued, although the latter's jealousies andlater fanatical religious preoccupations led eventually to a certain coolness,exacerbated by Rimsky-Korsakov's involvement with Belyayev, whose patronagebrought new possibilities of international publication to younger composers. In1905 he sided with disaffected students and was dismissed from the StPetersburg Conservatory, where he had taught since 1871, later to bereinstated, but trouble with the censors, not for the first time, prevented performanceof his opera The Golden Cockerel before his death in 1908.The opera Pskovityanka (The Maid ofPskov) occupied Rimsky-Korsakov intermittently for some 25 years. The firstversion of his first opera was staged in St Petersburg in 1873 and reflectedthe lack of technical knowledge shared by his nationalist colleagues, to whomthe work was dedicated. After further necessary study, he revised the opera in1876-7, adding a prologue, a royal hunt and storm with other incidents and someweight of counterpoint. This new version was not performed, but provided thenecessary elements for the present Overture and Entr'actes, used in 1882for a performance of the original play by Lev Alexandrovich Mey on which theopera had been based. The work was revised again in 1891-2 and performed in1896, while the Prologue was revised as a one-act opera. The completeopera was staged in Moscow in 1901.Rimsky-Korsakov had originally rejected thefirst act of Mey's drama. This became the prologue. Set fifteen years beforethe main action of the drama, it deals with the infancy of Olga, born as aresult of her mother Vera Sheloga's liaison with Tsar Ivan. In the first actOlga, brought up as the daughter of Prince Yury Tokmakov, viceroy in Pskov,learns the identity of her real mother, Tokmakov's sister-in-law. She is inlove with a young man but to her dismay her adoptive father plans that sheshall marry an old friend of his. In the following act news reaches Pskov ofthe approach of the Tsar, who