Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka

Glinka was born in 1804 at Novospasskoye, near Smolensk, and died in Berlin in 1857. He is usually named as the first Russian composer to win wide recognition at home, and later Russian composers, above all the group known as The Five, looked back to him. He studied in Milan and Berlin, and his stage music keeps some Italian bel canto coloratura. At the same time he worked folk melody into the musical argument, and his early hearing of peasant choirs, who sing improvised dissonant harmony under the tune, helped him step away from smooth Western harmony.

The one work in the catalog is the overture to his opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. The opera is based on Pushkin's 1820 narrative poem, in which the princess Lyudmila is carried off by the dwarf Chernomor and her suitor Ruslan, after many adventures, wins her back and marries her. It was first staged in Saint Petersburg on 9 December 1842 (27 November in the old calendar) and was received coolly, but the overture soon became a concert piece in its own right.

The overture lasts about five minutes and is built from tunes of the opera in a plan close to sonata form. It opens with rushing scales and a fast theme taken from the marriage scene. The lyrical second theme, in bassoons, violas and cellos, comes from Ruslan's aria about his love for Lyudmila. The development and the coda use all three tunes. In the coda a descending scale in whole steps appears in the basses to stand for Chernomor, and the overture ends in an energetic gallop.