Song 185 (Mily Balakirev--"Islamey: an Oriental Fantasy")

I decided to pick a piece from each member of "The Five" or "The Mighty Handful" to make a working week theme. Most people have probably heard the music of these Russian composers' from the Romance period but do not know the composers. While their music is not extremely popular today, they had an incredible impact on future music. Mostly what they are known for is their Russian nationalism in their music. Most music from this time was very western influenced, however they focused on music and themes from their own country like Russian folk music and Cossack music. It is quite interesting that many of the stories of these five great composers actually parallels what most rock groups have to deal with: censorship, substance abuse, and early death to name a few.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Milij_Aleksejevi%C4%8D_Balakirev_%28%D0%9C%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87_%D0%91%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B0%CC%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%29.jpg


For the first day I decided to look no further than their leader: Mily Balakirev. This is a virtuoso piece of piano music, which is one of Mily Balakirev's most famous pieces.

Here is a live recording performed by Emil Gilels on YouTube.
There are many more videos with this piece available on YouTube as well.

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