‘Tis the Music Dreams Are Made Of

My first brush with the legend of Scheherazade was a beautifully-illustrated, age-appropriate adaptation I found on the bookshelves of my childhood home.

I was hooked, and instantly. There was something so exotic, so intoxicating about the stories and their settings — and the episodic (even unconnected) nature of the narrative — that my young love makes perfect sense to me now, in hindsight.

But even my youthful fascination could not adequately prepare me for Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical interpretation — a composition which remains ones of the most vivid, descriptive, spine-tingling pieces I’ve ever heard, even to this day.

As a primarily Baroque/Classical listener, the era of Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov  and his fellow Late-ish Romantic composers is one into which I venture with some reservations. But there’s something so evocative, so imaginative, and so transportive that it gets me every time.

There’s probably something about the nationalistic sensibilities of The Mighty Handful that gets to me a bit, as well. I haven’t finished working my through the emotional/psychological ramifications of that one just yet, but I blame my (otherwise imperceptible) Czech roots.

Also, nice beard.