Symphonic poem Borodin's "In the Steppes of Central Asia" "powerful orchestral pictures, each unique in its composer's output". Titled a "musical portrait", "In the Steppes of Central Asia" evokes the journey of a caravan across the steppes. "Night on Bald Mountain", especially its original version, contains harmony that is often striking, sometimes pungent and highly abrasive; its initial stretches especially pull the listener into a world of uncompromisingly brutal directness and energy. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote only two orchestral works that rank as symphonic poems, his "musical tableau" "Sadko" (1867–92) and "Skazka" ("Legend", 1879–80), originally titled "Baba-Yaga". While this may perhaps be surprising,
Curse of Kehama a striking poem" and that the poem was "better constructed than the preceding ones". However, he argued that the poem's ending was "too crass in its situation and too facile in its resolution to succeed fully even as a moral allegory." Sir Granville Bantock, who made a symphonic poem out of Southey's "Thalaba", planned to do a symphonic poem based on "The Curse of Kehama", but only completed two orchestral scenes. Curse of Kehama The Curse of Kehama is an 1810 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. The origins of the poem can be traced to Southey's schoolboy days when