For a full-time professional scientist to compose works of such originality and beauty as the Polovtsian Dances (from Prince Igor) and the String Quartet No 2 is a minor miracle. Borodin’s first ...

the shimmering closing minutes of the 1909 First Quartet’s Lento assai (from 9'05" into tr 2) alluding unmistakably to Dohnányi’s Serenade in C for string trio, which was composed five years earlier.