Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov began his musical studies at an early age and showed signs of considerable talent, but he opted for a career as a naval officer, in keeping with a long-standing family tradition. Nevertheless, he continued to study music, and an encounter, at the age of 17, with the composer Mily Balakirev - the central figure in a movement to follow the example of Mikhail Glinka, Rimsky's childhood idol, in giving Russia a distinct and distinguished musical voice - determined his future as a musician. The composers of this new, nationalist school (in addition to Rimsky and Balakirev, it included Cesar Cui, Modest Moussorgsky, and Alexander Borodin) became known as "The Mighty Handful" or "The Mighty Little Bunch". If Moussorgsky was the most brilliant and original composer in the group, Rimsky-Korsakov, its youngest member, went on to become its most technically accomplished and the one most willing to absorb Western European musical tendencies, like his contemporary, Tchaikovsky; he was to exercise a powerful influence on two generations of Russian composers. But before achieving artistic maturity, he had to weather one of the most difficult crises any composer has ever undergone: he rejected all of his previous musical training as utterly inadequate and disowned all his compositions to date.

A turning point in his career came in 1871, with his unexpected appointment as professor of composition at the St Petersburg Conservatory (he resigned his naval commission in 1874). He wrote: "Having been undeservedly accepted at the Conservatory as a professor, I soon became one of its best and possibly its very best pupil." During the next years Rimsky was intensively occupied with Russian folk music and with preparing a new edition of Glinka's operas, whose transparent orchestration not only was a renewed stimulus to Rimsky's own astonishing expertise in this area - even before his "retraining" he was already dispensing advice on instrumentation to the older members of the "Five" - but also led him to a new path that began with his own opera May Night (first performed in 1880): melodies influenced by folk music, harmony and scoring influenced by Glinka.

Another critical moment in Rimsky's career was the visit to St Petersburg in 1889 of a travelling Wagner company, who staged the entire Ring, after which he devoted himself almost exclusively to the medium of opera. He did not have the dramatic instincts of a Moussorgsky, whose Boris Godounov and Khovanshchina he reorchestrated (too brilliantly, according to some critics) after the older composer's death; nevertheless, the stylistic ingeniousness demonstrated in such works as Mozart and Salieri, The Tsar's Bride, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and The Golden Cockerel - all written between 1897 and 1907 - has maintained a place for Rimsky in Russian opera houses. Outside Russia, his reputation rests primarily on a handful of orchestral works that have held their popularity for over a century: the symphonic poem Sadko (under which title he ultimately also wrote an opera), the Second ("Antar") Symphony, the Russian Easter Festival Overture and, above all, the two works heard in this recording - the Capriccio on Spanish Themes (better known in English-speaking countries by the Italo-French name, Capriccio espagnol) and the symphonic suite Scheherazade.

In 1872 Rimsky-Korsakov married the outstanding pianist Nadezhda Purgold; according to Gerald Abraham, an expert on Russian music, she was "beautiful, capable, and strong-minded; she was responsible for the published piano arrangements not only of her husband's works but of some of those of his friends, and her influence on him was no less than Clara Schumann's on Robert." Andrei Nikolayevich Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the couple's sons, became a musicologist and married the composer Yuliya Veysberg, and one of their daughters married the influential composer and teacher Maximilian Steinberg. Rimsky, who suffered from heart disease, died, after a series of angina attacks at the age of 64.

Harvey Sachs Biographical notes (c) 1996, reprinted by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

A selection of major works: Orchestral: 3 Symphonies, Capriccio espagnol, Dubinushka, Overture on Russian Themes, Russian Easter Festival Overture, Sadko (A Musical Picture), Scheherazade, Concerto for Trombone and Military Band, Piano Concerto, Serenade for Cello and Orchestra. Chamber: Piano Trio, Piano Duets,

Instrumental solo: Paraphrase on "Chopsticks", Pesenka, 6 Variations on B-A-C-H. Vocal: Songs. Choral: Communion Hymn, The Lord is Risen (anthem), Stage works (operas): The Golden Cockerel, May Night, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, Mozart and Salieri, Sadko, The Snow Maiden, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, The Tsar's Bride.