This album pairs Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Scheherazade with The Enchanted Lake, a short work by his student Anatoli Lyadov. In 1887–88, following the sudden death of his brilliant friend Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov composed three orchestral works which crowned his Russian national period and went on to make his name a permanent part of the worldwide concert repertoire: Capriccio espagnol; the symphonic suite Scheherazade; and the concert overture La Grande Pâque Russe. With Scheherazade Rimsky-Korsakov did not tell a story, but instead set individual, unconnected episodes and images to music, beautifully tracing the psychological development of the outline story. At the conclusion, we hear the Sultan’s angular theme, with which the first movement began, fading and merging with the solo violin representing the character of Scheherazade.