On Russian Music

Mention Richard Taruskin, and music lovers' eyes will roll and heads will nod approvingly in response to his over four decades of redefining the field of Russian music study. This volume gathers thirty-six essays on composers ranging from Bortnyansky in the eighteenth to Tarnpolsky in the twenty-first, as well as all the famous names in between. In addition, the reader is treated to Taruskin's thoughts on the history and historiography of Russian music. As Taruskin observes, this book picks up the banner from its namesake: Gerald Abraham's On Russian Music: Critical and Historical Studies of Glinka's Operas, Balakriev's Works, etc., with chapters dealing with Compositions by Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaiksky, Mussorgsky, Glazunov, and various other aspects of Russian Music (published in 1939). Impressive. Rating: five out of five stars.