Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

When it came to colour and fairy-tale atmosphere, none of the 19th-century nationalists could match Rimsky-Korsakov. Tchaikovsky may have had more passion, Mussorgsky more daring realism, but no-one could paint an orchestral canvas like Rimsky. His “symphonic suite”, Scheherazade Op. 35 (1888), a dramatic, sumptuously moody retelling of stories from the Arabian classic One Thousand and One Nights, is still a favourite with audiences nearly a century and a half after he wrote it, and his folk-legend-based operas The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh (1905) and The Golden Cockerel (1907) have enjoyed revivals in recent years. Born in 1844 to an aristocratic family near St. Petersburg, Rimsky was initially dissuaded from pursuing music, instead enlisting in the Russian navy, in which he saw some of the exotic places depicted in his music first hand, most famously in the case of his Capriccio espagnol Op. 34 (1887). Though lacking a formal education in music, he became a revered teacher (his pupils included Stravinsky), and his classic study, Principles of Orchestration (published in 1913), is still read today. He died in 1908 amid the Russian countryside he loved, on his estate to the south of St. Petersburg.