Schererazade - Rimsky Korsakov, Spotify Playlist

This is a symphonic suite based on the story of Shahyr, a Persian king who took a brand new wife every day and beheaded the old one, (rumors say he had "issues" with his first wife). Fortunately Schererazade was well read in the annals of bygone races and rulers and a great storyteller. She told the king tales each night that always ended at an very exciting point and in so doing managed to get her beheading postponed to the next day, day after day after day until 1001 nights of stories had passed (and they had three kids), whereupon the king decided to settle down with our heroine. ...way to go girl... 

On it's original vinyl this RCA Living Stereo Reiner recording is considered by audiophiles and record collectors to be one of the finest recordings ever made. In the mid 50's through the 60's Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra made a series of romantic symphonic recordings that became the gold standard for large orchestra sound. RCA was very careful when they transferred those old tapes to CD and this is one of their successes. If you haven't heard this you are in for a treat if you have a good sound system.

One reason why this recording sounds so good is the engineer was Louis Layton. Classical record collectors think so much of him that they have two characters in their database for "LL" to note when he was the sound engineer on the record. The original vinyl recording was RCA LSC 2446, the performance was early 1960 and it was released in a half dozen versions some of which are valuable (in mint condition with a little dog on the label.)

Rimsky Korsakov was one of a gang of five Russian composers that included Mussorgsky a soldier, Borodin a doctor and Rimsky Korsakov a naval officer who were amateur musicians and drinking buddies. They jointly decided to become great composers by rejecting all formal musical traditions and conservatories and embracing Russian nationalism and above all to seek truth! So they literally taught themselves music in a manner "devoid of any theoretical training" and created some of the best classical music ever written.

After Korsakov became a famous composer he was appointed professor of "Practical Composition and Instrumentation" at the St. Petersburg Conservatory although unbeknownst to the school he was ignorant of formal music theory, composition or conducting. By studying furiously and staying one assignment ahead of the students he managed to teach himself music composition and theory, became a fine teacher and was consequently thrown out of the gang of four for "selling out".