Scheherazade

Scheherazade was written in the summer of 1888 at a rented country house and first performed in St Petersburg that November under the composer. Rimsky-Korsakov originally gave the four movements descriptive titles from the Arabian Nights, then removed them, explaining that he wanted the listener to hear the piece as symphonic music with an oriental character rather than to follow a story. What he kept was the frame: a heavy unison theme for the Sultan and, answering it, a solo violin over harp chords for the storyteller, returning at each juncture to begin another tale.