Scheherazade Summer

Scheherazade Summer

Noel Laflin

March 2, 2015

(Scheherazade illustration - from "The Reader's Digest" edition)

Princess Scheherazade, fabled storyteller of Tales from the Arabian Nights, kept her head because she knew a good story or two; actually she knew a thousand and one good tales, which was very fortunate for her and soul-enriching for me.

I never really knew much about this legendary figure, let alone Rimsky-Korsakov’s classical interpretation of Scheherazade, until the summer of 1976 – at a now abandoned Scout camp high in the San Bernardino Mountains.  And although I started my last Ahwahnee camping season as ignorant as a Siberian peasant when it came to the classics, I soon became a fan.  Consequently, I will be forever grateful to a great friend, a powerful storyteller himself, for that melodious baptism into the world of joyful, sorrowful, whimsical, powerful, and oft times achingly beautiful minor key rhapsodies of Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin,  and Tchaikovsky – but to name a few.

And when I find that many of the memories of a by-gone summer of nearly forty years past have nearly slipped beyond recall, certain tunes from long-dead Russian composers can resurrect a remembrance or two.  Just give me the first few melodic bars of Russian Easter Festival Overture, Prince Igor or Scheherazade (via vinyl or disk) and I am mysteriously – nay, rather clairvoyantly channeled into the past faster than you can say ‘Open Sesame!'

Visions of saber-wielding Cossacks streaming down Ukrainian steeps and beautifully veiled Persian storytellers bewitching be-sodden sultans, all dance about a blazing campfire of the mind. They slowly waltz off together, lulled by the magical, musical pull of pine and fir – by the beckoning of a long-lost summer camp situated high in the mountains of both memory and youth.

So, thank you, Fred La Velle – friend of nearly fifty years - for the introduction to a few musical greats of long ago.  As you have a birthday next week, I am presently scanning my composers list for the likes of some of those famous dead Russians - lining them up, putting in the ear buds, and cranking up the volume in your honor – accomplishing this tale of a feat faster than the Glinka of an eye …