Fantasy for Piano

Arensky's fantasy for piano and orchestra, op. 48, is built on two epic melodies sung by Trofim Ryabinin, a peasant reciter of bylini from the Olonets region whose singing had been transcribed in the 1870s. Arensky wrote it in 1899 and it is his last substantial orchestral work; he died of tuberculosis in 1906, at forty-four, after years of drinking and gambling that Rimsky-Korsakov recorded coldly in his memoirs. The piece runs about twelve minutes in a single movement, treating the two folk themes in alternation rather than developing them.