Musical Storytelling: From Scheherazade to Pippi Longstocking

Throughout Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade we hear a recurring violin solo that represents Scheherazade, the heroine in the collection of folk tales One Thousand and One Nights, who tells a thousand stories with her indefatigable voice and thus manages to save her own life. Ravel was also inspired by the story of Scheherazade in his overture from 1898. We are also treated to Swedish composer Benjamin Staern’s Pippi Lifts Her Horse – a captivating and imaginative piece commissioned by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the fact that Astrid Lindgren’s beloved character Pippi Longstocking would have turned 75 in 2020.