Soppa with String Quartet

English and Russian music with strings from the Royal Filharmonikerna.

Aleksandr Borodin wrote his second string quartet as a tribute to his wife, the pianist Ekaterina Protopopova. The music seethes with lyrical warmth, loving melodies and danceable elegance. Several of the quartet's themes were arranged and reused later in the 1953 Broadway musical Kismet, a story of cunning and love set in medieval Baghdad.