Mysterious Music of the East

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 29, 1 February 1929, Page 14

Mysterious Music of the East

(THROUGH the genius of RimskyKorsakoff, Scheherazade will speak at 3YA on Thursday evening. It is a tale of marvels to beguile her lord. She tells of Sinbad and the magic isles,. . horses with brazen feet and men of steel, sultans and princesses, houris and turbaned slaves. Colour, warmth, rhythm, the very perfumes of the Orient breathe in her artful words. From the ancient collection of tales known as the "Arabian Nights," Rim-sky-Korsakoff drew inspiration for some of the most vivid and _ exotic music ever written. His ‘Scheherazade" Suite is a marvellous arabesque of orchestral colour, brilliantly imaginative, technically fine. Three generations of music-lovers have delighted in it. The Book of the Thousand and One Nights-commonly known to us as the "Arabian Nights’"-is the most famous collection of romances in the literature of the world. Growing up, between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, from

the tales that reached the Arabic through India and Persia, it became the _ storybook of the Hast, and, though it took long to penetrate to the Western world. its triumph was complete when it arrived. Such stories as "Aladdin" and "Sinbad the Sailor," which are now part of the common stock from which English children’s stories and pantomimes are drawn, are derived originally from the "Arabian Nights." The ballet "Scheherazade" was written by Rimsky-Korsakoff in 1888. It is based upon unconnected episodes from the "Arabian Nights," scattered through all four movements of the suite ---the sea and Sinbad’s ship, the fantastic narrative of Prince Kalender, the Prince and the Princess, the Bagdad festival, and the ship dashing against the rock with the bronze rider upon it. The composer himself described it as a "kaleidoscope of fairylike images and designs of Oriental character."