Rimsky-Korsakov joins the Navy (and sees the world)

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1862, an 18-year-old Russian named Nicolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov graduated as midshipman from the Russian Naval Academy and prepared for a two-year’s training cruise around the world. His uncle was an admiral and a close friend of the Czar, and in his autobiography Rimsky-Korsakov admits he, too, at first thought it might be a good idea — he loved reading travel books, after all.

But then Rimsky-Korsakov was seduced by music. He’d made the acquaintance of eminent Russian composers of his day, lost interest in a naval career, and dreamed of composing music himself.

The young midshipman’s tour of duty did enable him to hear a lot of it and to sample opera performances in London and New York. But what made the biggest impression on the budding composer was the sky below the equator.

“Wonderful days and nights,” he wrote. “The marvelous dark-azure of the day would be replaced by a fantastic phosphorescent night. The tropical night sky over the ocean is the most amazing thing in the world.”

It’s perhaps not too fanciful to believe that such impressions helped Rimsky-Korsakov develop into one of the most inventive and masterful painters of symphonic colors and instrumental effects.

Music Played in Today's Program

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908): Prelude (A Hymn to Nature), from The Invisible City of Kitezh; Scottish National Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, conductor; Chandos 8327