Two Tales by Scheherazade

The snare drum parts from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade are ideal for writing solo pieces for snare drum. The music contains a lot of movement and musicality that you can manipulate in all directions.

While I was working on  "A Delicate Tale by Scheherazade"  Franz von Suppé’s  "Pique Dame"  came to mind at some point. Not really surprising because at the same time, I was also working on two fantasy's about that piece. I didn't think too much about it, but almost immediately I put the pieces together and gave them the title "Shariar meets von Suppé".

And so as a result of Korsakov's Scheherazade and von Suppé's Pique Dame, two solo pieces for snare drum were created.

Shariar is a powerful sultan who wants to marry a pure being. But where do you find such a thing? He kills every woman on the first wedding night, because they are never pure enough for his taste… 

But then he spots the daughter of the grand vizier: Scheherazade. She does have an inkling of what awaits her and therefore devises a ruse; she begins to tell Shariar a story on the first wedding night. A compelling and exciting story. But she doesn't tell him the end. She promises to do that the next evening. Shariar definitely wants to hear the end of the story and so spares Scheherazade's life. But the next evening she also leaves the end open. And thus arises the Arabian Story-telling "A Thousand and One Nights".