The 1991 BBC documentary Pole to Pole with Michael Palin was an exciting journey for me. The host was quite funny and humorous from the very beginning when he inserted a pole at the North Pole. I just watched the second part where he visited the Soviet Union in the summer of 1991, before it fell apart. It still felt like a strange place when I am watching it 17 years later.
What I want to talk about today is a melody he sang when he visited the famous Tikhvin Cemetery in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), where a high concentration of writers and composers rest in peace. There is of course the most famous Tchaikovsky, but it was the haunting and beautiful melody of "Take my hand, I'm a stranger in paradise" that made me remember the name Alexander Borodin.
Borodin was one of The Five composers in the 19th century that promoted Romantic Nationalism movement in St. Petersburg. He made his living as a notable chemist. Oh wow, a scientist can be a good composer, too!
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