Thanks for these portraits.

It's interesting that R-K encountered Russlan and Ludmilla instead of The Red Poppy. The Sailor's Dance (which I played in high school band, or maybe it was summer camp orchestra) is the instrumental highlight of the latter. If R-K had heard it, maybe he would have decided to go to sea after all.

I am a long-time instrument-player (not talented enough to say "musician"), so stories about composers often trigger some sort of Proustian recollection. As I recall, there's a really nasty clarinet solo in Le Coq d'Or. I use the french title because that's what the kid I heard rehearsing it to show off at music camp called it. In an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld interviews Eddie Murphy, who says he once thought he wanted to be a boxer. That lasted, Murphy says, "until I got in the ring with someone who reallly wanted to be a boxer." That kid playing that solo made clear to me that I did not really want to be a clarinetist.

The Five have become pretty much a trivia answer. I may have heard one piece by Balakirev on the radio, and I don't believe I've ever heard any Cuy. The others have all written staples of youth ensembles, most notably Borodin's Polovtsian Dances and Moussorksky's Night on Bald Mountain. Rimsky may be too hard for kids. I don't recall ever playing anything he wrote.

Please keep 'em coming.