Saturday, January 24, 2009

Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Scheherazade is, of course, the name of the princess who tells the tales in Arabian Nights, and it is also unrelatedly the title of this symphonic suite by late 19th century Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov. Nah, just kidding, he based it around the classic tale. It's not by definition a tone poem, since it doesn't follow a specific narrative, although he does give the dastardly sultan of the tale a theme that competes with the lilting theme for the princess. It's bombastic and exciting, but NRK moves it beyond mere showmanship by implementing key changes that pull a lot of emotion out of the affair. If you're a philistine, you can just tell yourself it's the newest score to National Treasure or something and you'll enjoy it, I swear.

RATING: 79%

13 comments:

Walter Benjamin and the Mechanical Reproductions (the band) said...

holy f**k first all blue review

John said...

That's the good shit right there. I followed every one of those cocksuckers.

That kid seems to be having a blast with that snot aspirator thing.

John said...

There's 51 of them. Also, Bravestarr. I love the part where the horse and the guy go back to back and wink at each other.

Anonymous said...

The link to baby names says Ardith is the name of the day. It is a combination of Ara and Judith, of course.

Jacqui said...

I'm so glad I got my high speed back. Otherwise, it would have taken me 5 hours (at least) to get through all the links, which were all hilarious btw.

In short, dial-up is lame. Everybody probably knows that already, though.

laurie said...

I did not click any of those links or read the review. What's a Scheherazade? Is this about classical music? Sucks to that. (Clearly I am the intellectual of the group.)

John said...

You don't need to read stuff to have an opinion about it. The Grandaddy of R3 taught me that.

laurie said...

Well in that case, I think this person, place, thing, or idea sucks.

LipstickMom123 said...

Ha! Read that review!

John said...

Scheherazade is the narrator of 1001 Nights (sometimes called Arabian Nights.) Every time the Persian king marries a new bride, he executes her the next morning. When Scheherezade's turn comes, she tells the king part of a story each night, but doesn't tell him the ending until the next night. So he has to keep her alive to hear the endings of the stories, and then in the end he gives her a pardon for various reasons depending on which version you read.

Well, I'm sure that was wordy enough to defeat the whole purpose.

Chris said...

Boring.

PS - I totally thought this was one of John's reviews.

John said...

You win this round, Sharky, but I'll be back.

Evan J Peterson said...

Am I the only one who noticed that there's a giant black swastika on Sinbad's shirt? Who let that through photoshop?

BTW- my CAPCHA word today is "glethloc," which should become the name of our band. Kind of like Marvel Comics' Deathlok, but more goth.