Borodin the composer is after all only the composer of a few
fragments.
But sometimes, amid the ruins of an Eastern city, men find a slab of
porphyry or malachite so gorgeously grained, that not many whole and
perfect works of art can stand undimmed and undiminished beside it. Such
is the music of Borodin.
Rimsky-Korsakoff
The music of Rimsky-Korsakoff is like one of the books, full of gay
pictures, which are given to children. It is perhaps the most brilliant
of them all, a picture-book illuminated in crude and joyous
colors--bright reds, apple greens, golden oranges and yellows--and
executed with genuine verve and fantasy. The Slavonic and Oriental
legends and fairy tales are illustrated astonishingly, with a certain
humor in the matter-of-fact notation of grotesque and miraculous events.
The personages in the pictures are arrayed in bizarre and shimmering
costumes, delightfully inaccurate; and if they represent kings and
queens, are set in the midst of a fabulous pomp and glitter, and wear
crowns incrusted with large and impossible stones. Framing the
illustrations are border-fancies of sunflowers and golden cocks and
wondrous springtime birds, fashioned boisterously and humorously in the
manner of Russian peasant art. Indeed, the book is executed so
charmingly that the parents find it as amusing as do the children.
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