Alexander Borodin

Russian composer and member of the "Group of Five", Alexander Borodin pursued a parallel career as a chemist and researcher. Although the time he devoted to music was limited, he left a significant body of work, marked by Nationalist Romanticism and dominated by the opera Prince Igor, from which were extracted the famous Polovtsian Dances. Born in Saint Petersburg on November 12, 1833, Alexandre Porfirievitch Borodine was the illegitimate son of Georgian prince Louka Stepanovicth Guedevanichvili and a twenty-five-year-old married Russian woman, Evdokia Constantinovna Antonova. Because of this illegitimate birth, the child was registered by a servant, Porphyre Borodine, who gave it his name. However, the prince ensured that his mother could offer him a good education and a comfortable life, buying them a four-storey house and naming their son as heir in her will. He also organizes an arranged marriage with a military doctor named Kleinek to spare his mother any embarrassment. Raised by Kleinek, who did not officially recognize him but referred to herself as his aunt, the young Borodin was given home lessons by private tutors. Attracted by music and science, he taught himself to play the flute, piano and cello with a friend, Mikhail Shchiglev. In addition to a polka entitled Hélène at the age of nine, he later composed a Concerto for flute and piano and a Trio for two violins and cello. Admitted to the St. Petersburg Academy of Medicine in 1850, he studied for six years before being hired as a surgeon in a military hospital. Here, he met Modest Mussorgsky, a military officer seeking medical treatment. However, Borodin's sensitivity to the sight of soldiers' wounds, which vanished after his first operation, prompted him to take the professorial path. He entered the Military Academy of Chemistry and became a doctor of medicine in 1858. The following year, he moved to Heidelberg, Germany, for three years of postdoctoral training at the university. His work on benzene derivatives led to publication, and he pioneered a method developed by Heinz Hunsdiecker, known as the Hunsdiecker-Borodine reaction. During this stay, in 1861, he met the pianist who would become his wife two years later, Ekaterina Sergueïevna Protopopova. Appointed assistant professor at the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy on his return in 1862, he continued his successful research into aldehydes and became a full professor of chemistry. His position enabled him to make frequent trips to foreign congresses, notably in Belgium, Italy and Paris. He did not abandon music, however, and took composition lessons with Mily Balakirev (1937-1910), who introduced him to his friends César Cui (b. 1835) and Nikolaï Rimski-Korsakov (b. 1844), as well as Modeste Moussorgski (b. 1839), whom he met again in what one critic called the "Group of Five", representatives of a Russian music rooted in the popular tradition initiated by Mikhail Glakov.initiated by Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857). Although he considered himself a "Sunday musician", he was nonetheless open to Germanic trends, notably through his wife, who introduced him to Chopin, Liszt and Schumann. Later, they both went to Mannheim to attend Wagner operas, and Borodin visited Liszt in Weimar. In 1862, after composing a Quintet in C minor, he began work on his Symphony no. 1, completed five years later and conducted on February 24, 1868 by Balakirev, who had become director of the Russian Music Society. In the meantime, he demonstrated his allegiance to the nationalist movement with an Overture on Russian Themes (1966), before simultaneously tackling two works of a different nature. In 1869, he began work on his second symphony and on the opera Prince Igor, which took much longer. Completed seven years later, Symphony No. 2, known as the "Epic" because of its recurring theme, is one of his best-known works, notably for its festive Allegro finale. Premiered in 1877 by Eduard Nápravník, it was reworked by its composer and conducted in 1879 by Rimsky-Korsakov. On April 20 of the following year, Rimsky-Korsakov also premiered the symphonic poem On the Steppes of Central Asia, a remarkable evocation of nomadic caravans across the eastern plains, commissioned to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reign of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. Borodin dedicated it to Liszt after the master had congratulated him on his first symphony, and then made a transcription for piano four hands of this major piece of Russian Romanticism. Prior to this, Borodin had composed two string quartets, the first between 1874 and 1879, and the second in 1881, best known for its slow movement Notturno. In 1882, he began composing his Symphony no. 3, which was left unfinished at his death and completed by Alexander Glazunov. Affected by Mussorgsky's death in 1881, Borodin suffered serious health problems. He suffered several heart attacks and was hit by a cholera epidemic. After another visit to Liszt in 1885, he resumed composing Prince Igor, inspired by the late 12th-century epic poem The Tale of Igor's Campaign. But on February 27, 1887, while attending a masked ball at the Academy, Borodin suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 53. Rimsky-Korsakov, with Glazunov's help, completed the opera, which premiered at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre on October 23, 1890. Taken from the second act, the Polovtsian Dances have become a work in their own right.