A Musical Tour of the Country's Past and Present

This tour of Uzbekistan takes us to Bukhara and to Khiva, former oases on the old Silk Road that joined East and West. Their great buildings, mosques and medrese, reflect their former importance under successive rulers, with monuments of Islamic architecture and decorative art. Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov held a leading position among the Russian nationalist composers of the nineteenth century. His symphonic suite Sheherazade, based on episodes from The Arabian Nights, provides an apt accompaniment to a tour of Uzbekistan. The music chosen also includes the musical picture Sadko, based on a watery legend that takes the hero of the title into the depths of the sea.