Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, teacher, conductor, the actual leader of the Bel’iayev circle (since 1882) and of the entire St. Petersburg school of musical composition. He was born and raised in Tikhvin, in the Novgorod province (presently in the Leningrad region). In 1859-1860 he took piano lessons with pianist Théodore Canillé, then in 1861 he became acquainted with Balakirev and became a member of his circle, the “Mighty Handful.” Having graduated from the St. Petersburg Royal Navy, he took part in a voyage across the ocean on the clipper “Almaz” in 1862-1865. From 1871 he was a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory (having taught over 200 musicians) and the director of the Gratuitous Music School (1874–81).
Many of his compositions are connected with the world of fairy tales, the element of the sea, the poetry of Russian nature and pictures of everyday life of common folks, and are characterized by an artistic pictorialism. Among his compositions are operas (pertaining to epic, fairytale and historical genres): “The Maid of Pskov” (1872; in 1898 supplemented with the prologue “Boyarynia Vera Sheloga”), “May Night” (1879), “The Snow Maiden” (1881), “Mlada” (1892), “Christmas Eve” (1894), “Sadko” (1896), “Mozart and Salieri” (based on Pushkin’s “Little Tragedy,” 1897), “The Tsar’s Bride” (1898), “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” (1900), “Servilia” (1902), “Kashchey the Immortal” (1902), “Pan Voyevoda” (1904), “The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya” (1904) and “The Golden Cockerel” (1907), cantatas, orchestral compositions, including three symphonies (1865-1873), the “Spanish Capriccio” (1887), the “Scheherazade” suite (1888), 79 art songs and arrangements of folk songs, etc. He completed and edited a number of works by Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky, Modest Musorgsky and Aleksandr Borodin. He wrote a number of textbooks (on harmony and orchestration), as well as critical essays on music and an autobiography “Chronicle of My Musical Life” (1906).
Tchaikovsky dedicated his song “Pogodi” (“Wait a Little”) to Rimsky-Korsakov.
