Borodin Alexandr

(St. Petersburg, November 12, 1833 - February 27, 1887)

A born musician, at the age of nine, he composed his first pieces for the piano. However, to obey his maternal will, he enrolled in the medical faculty, graduating very young: at 28, he was a professor of chemistry at the Petersburg Academy of Medicine. He devoted himself to chemistry, which was his primary profession (and in this field, he had great merits, still remembered today by chemistry scholars of the USSR). Still, he always cultivated music with great love: his acquaintance with Mussorgsky seriously oriented him in the musical field, so much so that he soon enthusiastically joined Balakirev's initiative - the Group of Five - becoming a combative exponent of the new Russian national school. He was president of a musical society in Petersburg; he went to Germany, where he became a great friend of Liszt, then to Belgium, and was in the height of his activity, surrounded by the admiration of the whole progressive musical environment of at Tsarist Russia, when his death for aneurysm he caught him during a costume party he had organized in his luxurious home.

Borodin was an instinctive musician but also seriously committed as an intellectual and an innovator. He immediately understood the importance of the Balakirevian reform. He brought to it the impetuous contribution of a lively imagination, which saw in the enhancement of famous musical heritage a new and prosperous path open to the development of national music. He felt the charm of the East (he was the natural son of the descendant of a king of Imerezia in the Caucasus)famous. Still, he was too cultured and modern man not to feel also attracted by the culture of Western Russia and Europe. In his music, he thus merged the two worlds, creating colorful pages in which the aspiration to the music tune of a new character is resolved broadly, giving the right of citizenship to the most distant and contrasting influences. His lyricism is warm, at times disturbing, his palette rich in colors, and his orchestra among the most romantic and passionate of the 19th century. His scientific mentality also helped him musically. He seriously studied the musical folklore of the Russian East as an ethnomusicologist, capturing the tastiest juices that he could transfer into his music without betraying it, elevating them to an authentic expression of art. His rhythms can be overwhelming, and Prince Igor, to whom he dedicated much of his life, is one of the most successful and happy Russian national works of the 19th century.

In the symphonic field, he composed 3 symphonies (the last unfinished) and a famous symphonic sketch, In the Steppes of Central Asia.

According to Stassov, the famous art critic who was also Borodin's first biographer, the musician would have thought of this Symphony in a programmatic sense: the first movement should have represented a gathering of Russian warriors, the third the figure of an ancient Russian singer and the last a festive scene to the sound of gusli, amid the joy of a great mass of people.

Consequently, Stassov called this Symphony heroic, and it cannot be denied that this adjective better captures the overall composition's character. The air of this music is primarily bold and virile: it does not lack passionate and lyrical terni, but the developments are dense and dramatic. Undoubtedly it is a more complete and comprehensive work than the previous one, and it has rightly remained among the most famous works, particularly of the Russian composer. It is a more complete and comprehensive work than the previous one, and it has rightly remained among the most particular works, mainly.

The first movement is an Allegro-Animato molto, the second a Scherzo in Prestissimo (in the singular time of 1/1, that is a whole!) The third is an Andante in the foreign key with a lyrical central episode (Allegretto in 6/4). Of D flat major, the last a truly grandiose Finale in 3/4, full of imagination and admirable rhythmic and instrumental effects.