Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 - 1908)
Flight of the Bumble Bee
from the Tale of the Tsar Saltan

Rimsky Korsakov began his career in the navy, and music was only a hobby. At 27, still in the navy, he was surprised to be offered the job of professor of composition at St. Petersburg conservatory of music. He brought into Russian music a taste for the exotic and fairy tales, which continued into the works of Stravinsky. At the end of the 1880s Rimsky-Korsakov embarked on a series of operas on fantastic tales, one of which is “The Tale of Tsar Sultan”. It is based on a poem by Pushkin and was first performed in 1900. The best-known orchestral moment in the score is "The Flight of the Bumblebee", which describes Prince Guidon, magically transformed into a bumblebee, flying back to the court of his father the Tsar.