With less than two dozen songs to his credit and less than a dozen songs from his maturity, Borodin achievement as a composer of songs was as limited as his achievement in symphonies (two), string quartets (two), and operas (one). But among those dozen songs are works as masterful, as compelling, and as meltingly beautiful as anything Borodin ever wrote, which is to say, as beautiful as anything in Russian music. Perhaps the most famous of his songs is Dlya beregov otchiznï dal'noy (For the Shores of Thy Far Native Land), composed in 1881 for stark voice and throbbing piano, a grim, dramatic, and very lyrical song with the power of a great and inconsolable longing suffusing every word. Dlya beregov otchiznï dal'noy was later orchestrated by Glazunov, Borodin's musical executor who edited the first performing edition of Borodin's Prince Igor, and his orchestration sounds less like a monumentally homesick Borodin than a massively melancholy Rachmaninov and it closes with a fateful tympani roll.

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