241. Musical Omnivores

The Concert - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Works for string orchestra by Borodin and Frank performed by A Far Cry on April 21, 2013 and September 27, 2015.

• Borodin, Alexander: String Quartet No. 2, Mvt. 3 Notturno: Andante
• Frank, Gabriela Lena: Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout (2001)

These days, many of us think of the gulf between classical and popular music as fairly wide and immovable, but it wasn’t always so—and it’s not necessarily so today, either. On this podcast, we’ll hear A Far Cry play works by two musical omnivores: composers whose work routinely crosses between popular, folk, and classical genres.

First, we have a sort of accidental pop songwriter: the Russian composer Alexander Borodin, whose eminently hummable melodies were “borrowed” and turned into popular songs for the musical Kismet. We’ll hear Borodin’s second String Quartet; the third movement, called “Notturno,” was also set to words in Kismet, as the song “And This Is My Beloved.”

Sometimes influence flows the opposite way, as in composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s work, which borrows ideas from traditional folk music, and blends them with Western classical traditions. The title of this piece—Leyendas—means “legends,” and the movements depict a variety of aspects of traditional Andean life and folk music, from the sound of panpipes to the speed of the legendary chasqui messengers, who sprinted from town to town carrying important messages.