Orientalism is a product of the imagination fed by traveller’s tales, a place for the fulfilment of unconscious desires,of the exotic and the forbidden,of adventure and danger.It will be found across the seas,on the other side of the mountains or the desert,and it lives in the sleepy recesses of the mind. It offers an escape from the inhibitions of the familiar to an unknown world of freedom and license.

Of course the Orient was not just the source of pleasant daydreams but the place where you went searching for trade,wealth and Empire. So what did you do upon arrival in this place of wonder where everything was different ? One thing you DIDN’T do was to change YOUR way of life,YOUR dress,diet or habits because in so doing YOU would begin to lose YOUR own national identity,in danger of becoming an Oriental heaven forbid.

In order to reach the Orient from Europe you had to sail around Africa ,a long  way indeed.

The reason why Columbus sailed WEST is because the Ottomans had conquered Constantinople ,cutting off the Silk Road overland route to the Orient.Another route had to be found. Columbus didn’t know he was to discover America.

But in Russia the fabled  East was not on the other side of the ocean but almost on the geographical doorstep. All you had to do was to cross the URAL mountains or if you headed South you reached the Caucasus, home to fierce mountain tribes and Ancient Kingdoms.During the Middle Ages Russia itself had been part of the vast Mongol Empire.This had a lasting effect on Russia’s search for a national identity. The basic question being asked in the 19th century was whether Russia was to be regarded as Western or Eastern.Was it a gigantic buffer zone between Europe and the Orient or did it have a distinctive character of it’s own, neither truly Western nor Eastern.Russia had been a backward Tsarist despotism with an overlay of Peter the Great’s forced Westernization resting on another layer of mystical Christianity which itself conflicted with an enduring pagan past still evident in the life of the peasantry.One  could say the country had a mixture of tendencies, not knowing where it belonged , not wanting to conform ,in search of it’s distinctive identity

Napoleon once said”Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar”.He was not being complimentary. The Asian influences had lingered and when Russia itself became an Imperialist power, expanding into Central Asia and into the Caucasus, it’s Asian identity was accentuated. Many Russian families claimed descent from the Tatars and no less a luminary than the great composer Rimsky Korsakov had Tatar ancestry.

It is simplistic and unrealistic to attribute an artist’s personality to ancestry,race,genes etc. but the persistence of Tatar customs and vocabulary in Russia’s multi ethnic culture,especially in the peasantry is more likely to explain why Russian composers are so at ease with Orientalism . It is as if it comes naturally to them ,seemingly built into the culture. In the musical items I have chosen for you to hear there are examples of the various factors or influences which give Russian art music it’s distinctive flavour, call it Eastern or Western or better still a wonderful “ itself”.