Alexander Borodin

Alexander Borodin composed on weekends. His day job was chemistry: he was a professor at the Medical-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, where he ran a laboratory, published real research, and championed medical education for women. Music got whatever hours were left, which is why his catalog is small and why his opera Prince Igor was still unfinished when he died in 1887.

He belonged to the circle of Russian composers known as the Mighty Handful, mostly self-taught nationalists who wanted a Russian sound rather than a German one. Borodin's version of it is warm and generous, full of long melodies; decades later, several were borrowed wholesale for the Broadway musical Kismet.

Start with the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor, then the String Quartet no. 2 in D, whose slow movement carries one of his most familiar tunes.