CDs: various orchestras and conductors:

• Borodin: Symphony #2, In the Steppes of Central Asia, Overture and Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor; Mussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain (Seraphim)


• Sir Thomas Beecham/Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: Borodin: The Polovtsian Dances; Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherezade (EMI)


• The Haydn Quartet: Borodin: String Quartets 1 and 2 (Naxos)

Artists, whether they're actors, composers, painters, or writers, have frequently accompanied their creativity with a sometimes elusive quest for sheer survival. Reflecting this, the singer-songwriter John Gorka wrote the following in his liner notes to the appropriately titled Land of the Bottom Line, "I would like to dedicate this album to my mother, Loretta Gorka, who never mentioned 'starvation' or a 'real job' when my life took a turn for the music."

Mr. Gorka aside, there are numerous examples of artists who kept their day jobs. I remember the actor in Buffalo who worked in the Red Cross Bloodmobile by day and performed Brecht and Shakespeare by night. Then there was the pediatrician/poet William Carlos Williams. And we can't forget, Wendy Wasserstein reminds us in Uncommon Women and Others, that the poet Wallace Stevens was employed in the insurance industry. As former Olsson's buyer Joe Murphy tells me, upon Stevens's death, one of his co-workers famously said, "Wally wrote poetry?"

And then there was Alexander Borodin, the Russian chemistry professor who wrote music on the weekends, sometimes taking years or even decades over a composition, and left a small body of work, some of it unfinished.

But as a friend told me many years back, if Borodin composed relatively little, what he wrote was worth hearing. And surely you know at least part of that small body of work, for Borodin is ranked with the "Mighty Five" Russian nationalist composers -- Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov are the others -- and his influence stretches from the concert hall to the radio, from the Broadway stage to popular song.

Confession time: I got my first fix of Borodin courtesy of the original Broadway cast album of Kismet, that timeless musical featuring Joan Diener, Doretta Morrow, Henry Calvin, Richard Kiley, and of course the legendary Alfred Drake. The show's hummable, much-loved songs -- "Sands of Time," "Fate," "And This Is My Beloved," and of course "Stranger in Paradise" -- come straight from Borodin's symphonic, operatic, and chamber works. Listen to In the Steppes of Central Asia or any part of Prince Igor and you'll see what I mean.

But even if you come to Borodin with no frame of reference, he's instantly accessible. It's pretty difficult to resist the 2nd String Quartet, with its famous Nocturne. It's even more moving when you consider the work immortalizes the composer's relationship with his wife, Ekaterina.

Though Borodin is identified as a romantic and a Russian nationalist, forget the labels and simply receive the music. There's something universal in the vigor and optimism of the final movement of the 2nd Symphony, for example. I find it irresistible, life-affirming.

So too In the Steppes of Central Asia speaks a language that crosses geographical and cultural barriers. The haunting, vaguely melancholy strains remain with me and contain some unspoken universal truth.

Too often Borodin is confined to compilation albums, sandwiched in with his brother composers such as Mussorgsky or Rimsky-Korsakov, as in the examples above, or in budget compilations featuring Russian composers or orchestral favorites. I blush to mention the budget-priced Seraphim CD above; after all, it costs less than a magazine. Moreover, the vocals are omitted from the Polovtsian Dances (You'll find them on the Beecham recording). But it's such a pleasure to have an array of Borodin compositions on one disc -- a musical tour, if you will -- that it more than earns its place in your collection.

Beecham's recording of Polovtsian Dances, paired delightfully with Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade, provides an especially satisfying journey into the exotic yet mysteriously familiar world that is part of the legacy of Alexander Borodin.