Ruslan and Lyudmila, G.xiv

The overture opens with a burst of full orchestra, loud and fast from the first bar, setting a tempo that barely lets up for the rest of the piece. Listen for the strings racing through rapid scales almost too quickly to follow, a technical feat that makes this a favorite showpiece for virtuoso orchestras. A broad, singing melody soon arrives in the horns and cellos, taken from a love theme in the opera, offering a brief lyrical contrast before the energy resumes. Glinka also slips in a descending, almost falling figure associated in the opera with the villain Chernomor, a darker color amid the brightness. The music builds through short call-and-response exchanges between sections of the orchestra, trading fragments of the opening tune back and forth. There is no slow introduction and no real pause for breath, the piece drives forward to a final, headlong sprint of scales and a triumphant, decisive close. First-time listeners will recognize the overture immediately if they know classic cartoon or commercial music, since its galloping energy has made it widely borrowed. The whole piece lasts only about five minutes, making it a compact, high-energy opener before a longer program.

Glinka wrote Ruslan and Lyudmila as his second opera, based on a narrative poem by Alexander Pushkin, completing it in 1842. The opera premiered in St. Petersburg that year, and while the full work had a mixed initial reception, the overture was admired from the start for its brilliance and energy. Glinka composed the overture last, after finishing the opera itself, drawing its main themes from music already heard inside the opera. In the decades since, the overture has far outstripped the opera in popularity outside Russia, becoming a concert staple performed on its own. It is often used to open orchestral programs because of its short length and immediate impact, and it remains one of the most frequently played orchestral excerpts by a Russian composer from the mid nineteenth century.