“Theme, Variations and Finale” (Tribute to Ilya Muromets a bogatyr)” is RECORDED! 🙂
In my opinion it is one of my best compositions for guitar solo written until now.
Here is a short background of the piece:
When I was a small kid, my mother used to read me a lot of Russian fairy tales, when I went to bed: breathtaking adventures of strong knights and beautiful princesses, battles between good and evil, interesting stories of common peasants. I had (and still have 🙂 ) a good imagination, so I was always very thrilled by those stories and during a tale I lived through a lot and was always worried about the characters! I remember by heart many of those stories. But I always admired tales about three knights: Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich. Together they fought many battles and were wise, brave and strong. Unconsciously, from the first time I heard the tale, I started to follow their steps: I tried to understand what is “good” and what is “bad” – I wanted to fight with evil in the world, I did a lot of sport – wanted to be strong, so nobody could offend me or people close to me and I tried to be good at the school – wanted to be wise, so to know, how I could make world a better place 🙂
So this piece is a tribute to Ilya Muromets, a bogatyr, and its full title is “Theme, Variations and Finale (Tribute to Ilya Muromets a bogatyr)”. “Bogatyr or vityaz is a stock character in medieval East Slavic legends (byliny), akin to a Western European knight-errant”. Wikipedia.