Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov spent most of his boyhood in a military school -- a naval school, to be exact. Once in the navy, however, he seemed more inspired by music than by mastheads. While on his first tour, he wrote a symphony that was refined and performed less than one year afte

A reflective or dream-like melody, a prelude filled with bittersweet melancholy, the surrender to a nationalist impulse: all are quintessential Chopin. In his short life, Frédéric Chopin moved from the fashionable salons of Paris into history, as one of the greatest composers of mus