While continuing to search the remotest corners of the late 19th Century on my hands and knees, happy to find even the most insignificant speck of glitter or petal of rose, once non-chalantly cast away as if the store of good melodies were endless...(sigh); I came across a 3 CD set of Jarvi conducting the suites of Rimsky Korsakov on Chandos. Besides the perennial favorites, "The Golden Cockerel," "Flight of the Bumble Bee," and "Procession of the Nobles" from "Mlada;" Jarvi and the Scottish National present some lesser-known but wonderfully evocative delights, including "May Night--Overture," "The Snow Maiden," "Tsar Saltan," "Christmas Eve," and "Invisible City of Kitezh." Potent and sultry melodies abound, and I would like to single out Christmas Eve, for its splashes of orchestral color that look forward to Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky; the "barrel adrift in the sea" section of "Tsar," with its string and harp 'pings' that remind one of wind-driven raindrops striking the face; and the opening of "Invisible City, where a chorale is blurred by oscillating strings to suggest the magical, half-lit world of Nature. Good stuff. John Smyth