Russian Serenade - George Naff

Click HERE to listen to a recording.

Click HERE view a perusal score.

I'm not the first composer to borrow this melody from Mr. Borodin. I suspect most of us, of a certain age, will remember this tune as a very famous ballad – Stranger in Paradise, which was one of several Borodin melodies used for the musical Kismet, first performed on Broadway in 1953. A film version was produced in 1955 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The first half of Russian Serenade is scored mostly for woodwinds and mallet percussion. Though it is not actually a band transcription, it loosely follows the original score which was orchestrated by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov after Borodin’s death in 1877. The second half of the piece is an original setting of the theme featuring a brass lead which is designed to take advantage of the musical colors and powerful presence of a large wind symphony.

Standard Wind Ensemble

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