RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF
"Of all the Slav composers Rimsky-Korsakoff is perhaps the most charming, and as a musician the most remarkable," writes the music-critic of the Mercure de France. "He has not been equalled by any of his compatriots in the art of handling timbres, and in this art the Russian school has been long distinguished. In this respect he is descended directly from Liszt, whose orchestra he adopted and from whom he borrowed many an old effect. His inspiration is sometimes exquisite; the inexhaustible transformation of his themes is always most intelligent or interesting. As all the other Russians, he sins in the development of ideas through the lack of cohesion, of sustained enchainment, and especially through the lack of true polyphony. The influence of Berlioz and of Liszt is not less striking in his manner of composition. Sadko comes from Liszt's Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne, Antar and Scheherazade at the same time from Harold and the Faust symphony. The Oriental monody seems to throw a spell over Rimsky-Korsakoff which spreads over all his works a sort of 'local colour,' underlined here by the chosen subjects. In Scheherazade, it must be said, the benzoin of Arabia sends forth here and there the sickening empyreuma of the pastilles of the harem. In the second and the third movements of Antar the composer has approached nearest true musical superiority. The descriptive, almost dramatic, intention is realised there with an unusual sureness, and, if the brand of Liszt remains ineffaceable, the ease of construction, the breadth and the co-ordinated progressions of combinations mark a mastery and an originality that are rarely found among the composers of the far North, and that no one has ever possessed among the 'five.'
"Chopin's well-known saying in regard to Liszt, when he heard that the latter was going to write a notice of his concert, tells more," says Professor Niecks, "than whole volumes. These are the words: 'Il me donnera un petit royaume dans son empire,' which were said to Ernest Legouvé by Chopin. Now here is another side-light on Chopin and his opinion of the great virtuoso. He is referring to Liszt's notice of some concert, apparently at Cologne. He is amused at the 'fifteen hundred men counted, at the president of the Phil [harmonic] and his carriage, etc.,' and he feels sure that Liszt will 'some day be a deputy, or king of Abyssinia, or of the Congo; his melodies (themes), however, will rest alongside the two volumes of German poetry'—two volumes which did not seem destined, apparently, to achieve immortality."