I Wanna Tell You A Story

This one is one of the first batch of classical disks that I bought because I knew of the piece and the "big tunes" in it. It is one of EMI's groc series ( great recordings of the century ) and it features Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Written as ballet music, Scheherazde tels the tale of the arabian Nights where Scheherazade tries to save her skin by keeping the sultan interested in her stories. The two adversaries are portrayed throughout by their own motifs ( the solo violin of Scheherazade played here by Steven Staryk ) I guess it is another of those works that is sometimes not given the due it deserves because it is so popular and regularly programmed but it does stand up as a fine work. The disk is padded out with Borodin's Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor which I have already talked about as part of the Borodin "twofer" disk I have. Scheherazade is rather an elderly recording now ( 1958 ) but the sound is perfectly acceptable and the RPO are on vintage form, relishing the colours of the orchestrations.