Alexander Borodin was the illegitimate son of a prince and his mistress, educated at home in St Petersburg by his mother. Although music was an early passion, he discovered his avocation once he matriculated at the city's Medical Surgical Academy. A chemist he became, and a good one, though not without his extracurricular enthusiasms: the head of department once admonished him thus, mid lecture: 'Mr Borodin, busy yourself a little less with songs'.

We have left to us a small, eccentrically proportioned body of work which acknowledges the learnt influence of Wagner and Chopin in their respective fields while nonetheless cultivating a personal and nationally inflected voice that was principally nurtured by his fellow member of 'The Mighty Handful', Mily Balakirev.

That voice was first cultivated in abstract orchestral works, which met with mixed acclaim, but the Second Symphony is one of the most popular Russian works of its kind; perhaps less well known these days than half a century ago, but full of Borodin's trademark, lyrical melodies, bending towards a wistfulness and melancholy that never threatens to break into outright hysteria unlike the work of his contemporary Tchaikovsky.

Songs and chamber music are barely known outside his home country, but they are worth discovering, as this unique edition will quickly reveal. And then there's his sprawling, unfinished masterpiece: Prince Igor, work of almost two decades, completed and partly orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, the brainchild of the Mighty Handful's christener, Vladimir Stasov. This chronicle of a bloody but exuberant period in Russian history makes the most of Borodin's fascination with Russia's outposts, in music of 'oriental' flavour that survives in popular recognition through the bounding energy of the Polovtsian Dances.

Contents:
CD 1: Piano Music
CD 2: Prince Igor: Overture, Prologue, Act I beginning
CD 3: Prince Igor: Act I conclusion, Act II
CD 4: Prince Igor: Act III, Act IV
CD 5: Sextet in D Minor, String Trio in G Minor, String Trio in G, Piano Trio in D
CD 6: Songs and romances
CD 7: String Quartet No.1 in A, Piano Quintet in C Minor
CD 8: String Quartet No.2 in D, String Quintet in F Minor, Serenate alla spagnola
CD 9: Symphonies Nos 2 & 3
CD 10: Symphony No.1, In the Steppes of Central Asia