Mili (or Mily) Balakirev (1837-1910) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor known today primarily for his work promoting musical nationalism and his encouragement of more famous Russian composers, notably Tchaikovsky. He's also probably better known today for his piano compositions.

He began his career as a pivotal figure, extending the fusion of traditional folk music and experimental classical music practices begun by composer Mikhail Glinka. In the process, Balakirev developed musical patterns that could express overt nationalistic feeling. After a nervous breakdown and consequent sabbatical, he returned to classical music but did not wield the same level of influence as before.

As a composer, Balakirev finished major works many years after he had started them; he began his First Symphony in 1864 but completed it in 1897. The exception to this was his oriental fantasy Islamey for solo piano, which he composed quickly and remains popular among virtuosi. Often, the musical ideas normally associated with Rimsky-Korsakov or Borodin originated in Balakirev's compositions, which Balakirev played at informal gatherings of The Five. However, his slow pace in completing works for the public deprived him of credit for his inventiveness, and pieces that would have enjoyed success had they been completed in the 1860s and 1870s made a much smaller impact.

Chopin’s originality as a composer received a decidedly nationalist interpretation by Balakirev and his circle of “The Mighty Five,” (Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin.)

For Balakirev, Chopin managed to integrate folk materials with the most advanced techniques of contemporary European art music. And it was precisely this fusion of nationalism and modernism that Balakirev attempted to promote. For him, “Chopin was neither a salon composer nor a romantic composer, but a radical, progressive figure.”

Balakirev’s despotic nature and his tactlessness made him innumerable enemies, so that even his friends and young disciples came to resent his tutelage; and a series of personal and artistic misfortunes led to his almost complete withdrawal from the world of music during 1872–76 and his taking a post as a railway clerk. Balakirev had passed through a period of acute depression 10 years earlier; now he underwent a more severe crisis from which he emerged a totally changed man, a bigoted and superstitious Orthodox Christian. He gradually returned to the music world, resumed directorship of the Free School, and from 1883 to 1894 was director of the imperial chapel. He also resumed musical composition, completing several works, including a symphony he had abandoned many years before, and writing several new pieces, among these his Piano Sonata (1905), Symphony No. 2 (1908), and a number of piano pieces and songs. The last decade of his life was spent in almost complete retirement.

The celebration of Chopin's music, though, became a preoccupation well into Balakirev's twilight years, and, on the occasion of the Chopin centenary in 1910, Balakirev produced this, his orchestral Chopin Suite.

I've only chosen this one work to present (tracks 4 - 7), but it's not a long piece, so please, investigate the other pieces on this recording too.