| | Robert, yes, I've been familiar for a while now with the Dismuke web page on Rand's musical favorites. It acquainted me with a wonderful old recording by Austrian tenor Richard Taubert of "Dein Is Mein Ganzes Herz" (You Are My Heart's Delight) from Franz Lehar's operetta The Land of Smiles. I was so taken by it, that I decided to include it on the concert that pianist Ben DiTosti and I performed last summer at The Atlas Society's Summer Seminar in Orange, California. It was well received, and Tibor Machan delightedly remarked of the memories it revived of him hearing it as a child back in Hungary.
Glenn, hi! Yes, one of the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin's opera Prince Igor was adapted in the 1950s as the song "Stranger in Paradise" in the Broadway play Kismet. Interestingly, another of his luscious melodies, this one from one of his string quartets, was morphed into the popular song "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads," which got a lot of airplay during the 50s, as I recall.
I'm currently reading a biography of Rachmaninoff (Rachmaninoff: Life, Works, Recordings by Max Harrison), and the author opines that Borodin was more of an influence on Rachmaninoff's lyric style than has previously been realized or acknowledged. After hearing Borodin's music and getting premonitory echoes of Rachmaninoff's rhapsodic and heroic themes, I'm not surprised at all. Borodin was kind of the Henry Cameron to Rachmaninoff's Howard Roark, if you follow the analogy. (Though Rachmaninoff was not known to have studied composing under Borodin, nor worked for him in his chem lab. :-)
REB
|
|
