In the Steppes of Central Asia

The first violins, divided into several parts, hold high harmonics marked pp. A flute enters with long notes at bar 2 and an oboe at bar 4. The harmonics continue beneath the whole opening section.

The first clarinet plays the Russian song at bar 5, marked p cantabile. At sounding pitch it begins E, D, C♯, then B and C♯, and falls to A and E in bar 7.

At bar 17 a horn plays the same melody, again marked p cantabile, while the violins hold their harmonics.

At letter A the cor anglais enters with a new melody marked cantabile ed espressivo, over pizzicato violas and cellos. The part is printed with one sharp for an instrument in F, which puts the melody in A minor.

In summer 1879 two men asked Rimsky-⁠Korsakov, Borodin and other composers for music to accompany tableaux vivants marking twenty-five years of Alexander II’s reign. The scheme collapsed, and Borodin’s piece was played at concerts.

At letter C two horn parts, marked p, play a theme over the trombones, cellos and basses, and the music builds towards the tutti.

Winds, brass and strings play accented chords together in a tutti from letter D that ends where the strings change to pizzicato and the winds drop to mf.

At letter E the cor anglais plays the melody again, marked p cantabile, and the cellos play it with the bow beneath.

At Weimar in June 1881 Borodin wrote to his wife that Liszt was pleased with the Steppes and had urged him to make a four-hand arrangement by the next day. Borodin dedicated the piece to Liszt.

At letter G a horn enters, marked p cantabile, over pizzicato violas, cellos and basses, as the flutes and violins end the triplet melody of the preceding bars. The critic Soloviev wrote that the Russian and the Eastern theme, at first separate, afterwards unite.

Four solo violins, divided and muted, hold long notes while the first flute plays a solo marked pp cantabile dolcissimo. The score then marks rall. e dim. and p perdendosi, and ends pppp.