There are 1001 reasons to fall in love with this music. Great Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov lays the foundations for this bright, colourful and gorgeously textured evocation of the exotic. She was the woman who spun her own fate from the threads of narrative: Scheherazade, the star and storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights. She famously escaped death by drawing her executioner further and further into the tale. It’s a trait Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov would employ in the symphonic suite he named after the cunning narrator, with sweeping and immersive instrumentation. Scheherazade was composed in 1888 and draws on Rimsky-Korsakov’s career as an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy. He had a lifelong fascination with folklore and his role as an inspector of Naval bands gave him a long association with the ocean. The suite conjures the brine and the sea-spray that would accompany Sinbad on his many journeys, and brims with exoticism. Under the baton of Peruvian conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, making his MSO debut, it soars like the chronicles of old. Deeply spiritual and full of impassioned lament, Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque is a work of introspection and profundity. The composer’s original conception of the work for voice is unmistakeable, especially in the hands of Timo-Veikko Valve whose cello sings with rich lyricism. PROGRAM BLOCH Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque* RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade ARTISTS Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor Timo-Veikko Valve, cello*