Rimsky-Korsakov: Letters to His Family and Friends

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov is one of Russia’s great musical figures. Although largely self-taught, he became a professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and one of the famed Mighty Handful of Russian nationalist composers. Works like Scheherazade and Capriccio Espagnol remain popular, as does his textbook on orchestration. His influence extended from students like Stravinsky and Prokofiev to non-Russian composers such as Debussy, Dukas, and Ravel. Yet relatively little written about him is available outside Russia. Rimsky-Korsakov: Letters to His Family and Friends is a rare, revealing look at the composer, written by his granddaughter Tatiana. Featuring a wealth of correspondence and photographs from his family’s archives, this book provides new, fascinating details about the composer’s life, work, and relations with close friends and colleagues, including Borodin, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky. It also sheds new light on his wife, Nadezhda Purgold, an accomplished composer and pianist who helped her husband with his own compositions. Many letters involve Rimsky-Korsakov’s other family members and important figures in art, history, literature, and music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Filled with material presented in English for the first time, this book is an essential resource on Rimsky-Korsakov, late romantic and early modern music, and culture in Russia as it approached the end of an era.