Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade / Gergiev · Vienna Philharmonic · Salzburg Festival 2005
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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1888 Scheherazade, an exotic, ravishing, timeless, evocative fantasy brimming with awe, sensuality and sheer wonder based on The 1,001 Nights, the sprawling collection of ancient Arabian legends. The framing story is summarized in a prefatory note to the score: the Sultan Shahriar, who regards all women as deceitful, vows to take a virgin as his new wife each day, sleep with her, and then slay her the next morning. But the brilliant Scheherazade outwits him by spinning intriguing tales that she would halt at dawn and only conclude the next night. After the thousand and one nights of the title, she finally wins his love.
That story merely enfolds Rimsky’s work. Each of its four movements originally was labeled with one of Scheherazade’s tales, and is unified by two primary themes heard at the very outset. The first suggests the Sultan, brusque in unison brass and strings at the outset (perhaps suggesting the stern Sultan) but then constantly transformed to reflect his growing enchantment. The other is a gorgeous refrain consistently heard in the high register of a solo violin, often with harp accompaniment, which Rimsky identified with Scheherazade narrating each of her fanciful tales to conquer the Sultan with her sweet guile:
The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship – According to the 1,001 Nights, this tale finds the seafaring adventurer Sinbad meeting many strange folk, birds, fish and other rarities after landing on an island that turns out to be the back of a giant fish. After the gruff opening cedes to the irresistible sweetness of the Scheherazade refrain, it softens into the primary theme, which then, together with its fragments and echoes, modulates over arpeggiated strings that conjure the undulations and changing moods of the ocean. Built wholly upon repetitions of the simplest materials, the movement sustains interest through the wonder of Rimsky’s dexterous handling.
The Story of the Kalendar Prince – A fakir tells Sinbid his macabre account of being buffeted between visions of veiled women and a monstrous genie. A pastoral theme of sinuous melody and jagged rhythm is torn between lyrical temptation and vigorous threats until transfixed and lulled by a reappearance of the Scheherazade theme.
The Young Prince and the Young Princess – Another tale told to Sinbad, of Ibraham who falls in love with a portrait of Jemilah, seeks her out and wins her love when she realizes that her fierce hatred of men was kindled all along by jealousy of his reported goodness. Rimsky fashions a lilting, playful love song, extended by shimmering winds and string scalar runs, offset by a jaunty uptempo variant spiced by gentle percussion (mostly a triangle and tambourine), until the Scheherazade theme wistfully unites them.
The Festival at Bagdad – The Sea – The Ship Goes to Pieces on a Rock Surmounted by a Bronze Warrior – Conclusion – As the compound title suggests, the work ends with an expansion of the complex emotions of the second movement, as Sinbad returns from his voyages to festivities in Baghdad, yearns for yet more adventure and heads out to uncharted waters, where he loses his ship in a storm. Yet « his life, like the stories of Scheherazade, leads ever onward toward the next adventure, full of the wonder of what is yet to come. » After depicting the joyous celebration and a rousing storm, the music culminates in a broad restatement of the unadorned main theme, as if to wipe away the Sultan’s pretension and leave him to confront himself. The exquisite ending belongs to Scheherazade. Having won her victory over the Sultan’s cruel power through astute charm and allure, his opening motif slinks into the deep bass while her captivating theme soars higher and finally alights on a barely audible harmonic two octaves above the treble staff, drawing us with her toward ever new reaches of infinite imagination.
Rimsky later regretted the descriptive titles and insisted that his themes were purely material for free musical development, intertwining and unifying the movements,
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