ORCHESTRAL SOUNDS FROM THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS: The musicians of the Tonkunstler Orchestra – and especially their concertmaster Kirill Maximov in soloist mode – want to tell you some fabulous stories. There can be few other orchestral pieces that capture the imagination as directly as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical tales from the «Thousand and One Nights». Violin concerto? Symphonic poem? Or suite? «Scheherazade», written in the summer of 1888, has a little of each, or even better: everything in one! The four movements have names like «The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship» and «Festival at Baghdad»; the musical bor- rowings come from Persia, India and the Caucasus. Emmanuel Tjeknavorian chose this work for his first ever CD production as conductor of a full symphony orchestra because he has an emo- tional connection to it. He explains why in his deeply personal message in the booklet. The young violinist, now increasingly making a name for himself as a conductor, has complemented «Scheherazade» with other showpieces of the Russian orchestral repertoire by Mikhail Glinka and Aleksandr Borodin.