Eastern approaches: The Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra reimagines Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade

The Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra has brought Arabian instruments into Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, making it more than an exercise in Orientalism.

The Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra are a relatively new ensemble, having grown out of a chamber orchestra in 1999. Courtesy Borusan Culture and Arts

As a Gulf resident, it can be hard to read the phrase “where East meets West” without groaning inwardly. As clichés used to describe the cultural overlap between Europe and the Middle East go (where, after all, does East not meet West?) this one is rather well-worn. Every now and then, however, some cultural artefact comes along that is so obviously a planned encounter between mythical eastern and western spheres that the phrase springs to mind once more.

Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic poem Scheherazade, inspired by the tales of the One Thousand and One Nights, has always been one of these. A fine new recording of the piece by the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, a performance that incorporates classical Arabian instruments into the ensemble, makes it fit the phrase so exactly that it's only proper to dust it off for use just one more time. If you ever wanted to know what East meeting West might actually sound like, this could well be the recording to buy.

Composed in St Petersburg in 1888, Rimsky-Korsakov's opus is one of the most evocative examples of European musical Orientalism there is, heady, rich and harmonically adventurous. Among Russian classical music's most popular pieces, Sche­herazade opened the ears of western audiences to a thrillingly exotic, self-consciously foreign world, simultaneously pushing in two directions at the same time. The piece is both a tribute to the allure of real Middle Eastern culture as seen from the West and a fantastical confection that paints an entirely imaginary Middle East for its listeners' delight.

It's particularly interesting to hear the piece played so well by an orchestra whose home is on the fringes of the region that inspired it. The Borusan is a fairly new ensemble, enlarged from a chamber orchestra only in 1999. It's already quietly making a name for itself with recordings that stray into unexpected territory, mixing popular names including Prokofiev and Respighi with outliers such as Erwin Schulhoff and Paul Hindemith. The Borusan Orchestra's new recording continues in breaking interesting new ground, underlining Sche­herazade's serious engagement with Middle Eastern culture further than usual. It breaks with tradition by elegantly incorporating short interludes played on the oud and ­qanun into the piece, the lute and zither fitting into Rimsky-Korsakov's score beautifully and almost seamlessly. There's something refreshing about this, shaking a much-played work awake and subtly reframing it once more with the music that in part inspired it.

While Scheherazade has been accused by some of wandering towards kitsch, its variety and charm have stood the test of time. To capture just how much the piece still shimmers, it's probably best to turn to another Russian composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who himself performed parts of the piece adapted for piano. He once said of it: "When there is a snowstorm, the flakes seem to dance and drift. When the sun is high, all instruments shine with an almost fiery glow. When there is water, the waves ripple and splash audibly throughout the orchestra … the sound is cool and glassy when he describes a calm winter night with glittering starlit sky."

This vivid charm comes across well in the new recording [Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk]. The Borusan's strings have both gloss and depth, while the woodwind section picks through the score with an alluring, appropriately birdlike elegance. Particular standouts are solos from first violinist Pelin Halkaci Alkin, whose shimmer lends real beauty and feeling to the score's night-time shadows. Rimsky-Korsakov's work sits alongside pieces by other Russian contemporaries equally agog with the East, Mily Balakirev and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, as well as a dance suite by the 20th-century Turkish classical pioneer Ulvi Cemal Erkin. While these unquestionably enjoyable pieces might not be to everyone's taste, they are nonetheless a good snapshot of attempts to fuse western classical music with Middle Eastern and Central Asian folk traditions.

For a Middle Eastern audience, Scheherazade and pieces like it still pose some interesting questions. How should Middle Eastern listeners respond to a piece that demonstrates an appreciation of their music heritage, but depicts their cultural world for an essentially European audience? The experience can be both delightful and slightly disconcerting, not least because Scheherazade can be read as a cultural counterpart to growing western encroachment in the Middle East and Asia during the period when it was written. In late 19th-century Russia, the choice of One Thousand and One Nights as musical inspiration had particular bite. The piece was written, after all, during a period when the Russian Empire was expanding fast to the south and east, chipping away territory from the Ottomans and Persians. The tsar's forces had recently absorbed the Caucasus region by force and were steadily reaching into Central Asia, taking over the great Islamic cities of Samarkand and Bukhara as they went.

These new conquests may have delighted Russia’s elite, but they also posed difficult questions. If Russia’s mission was (as it proclaimed) a civilising one, how could it respond to the cultures of the lands it conquered, which were clearly both ancient and sophisticated? Should it attempt to absorb and partially adopt the traditions of its new acquisitions? Or should it follow the western mores of the time to their conclusion and try to contain them, or even stamp them out? To make this debate yet more complicated, Russia was already ambivalent about its own western-ness, just as it remains in part today. Dominated during the Middle Ages by Mongols and Tartars and thus separated from the European mainstream, Russia had long had a certain self-doubt as to how western its culture was, or should aspire to be.

Not far beneath its surface, Scheherazade is grappling with these issues. Rimsky-Korsakov's work expresses wonder and fascination with the worlds of both Arabic- and Persian-speaking culture onto whose fringes Russia had recently stepped. At the same time, the piece's eastern influences are lightly worn. Certainly, there are melancholy, chromatic minor-key slides of notes that must have sounded bracingly foreign to Rimsky-Korsakov's contemporaries. Likewise, hauntingly beautiful string and woodwind solos have a circular, chant-like musical line that contains a distant, tantalising echo of classical Arabian song. The overwhelming impression, however, is of eastern colouring and decoration rather than of total fusion. This is appealing, seductive even, but to Scheherazade's detractors, the effect is little more than Orientalist tinsel.

Personally, I think that Rimsky-Korsakov's music is more interesting than this. Listen carefully to Scheherazade and you can hear a three-way conversation going on, mixing western Romanticism with Russian folk music and Persian influences. This approach isn't a search for colour alone – it's an attempt to reshape the musical world by placing Russia at its centre, breaking away from Central European dominance by moving into new territory. It's the sound of a composer opening a window, and as such, it proved extremely effective in letting in fresh air to western music.

Scheherazade's sound world may be unmistakably late 19th-century but it also looks forward (even though Rimsky-Korsakov's work later became more conservative). You can already hear musical modernism rustling somewhere in its undergrowth, the beginnings of Stravinsky (Rimsky-Korsakov's devoted pupil) in its dramatic orchestration and folk meanderings. Rimsky-Korsakov's work has also been an inspiration and guide to Middle Eastern composers looking to explore their classical traditions with the western orchestra, exploring their own fascination and creating more cross-cultural ferment. Scheherazade may have been composed as a window to the East, but turned out to be a window that opened both ways.

Feargus O’Sullivan is a regular contributor to The Review.