Leader, J. Mouland Begbie
Conductor, Guy Warrack
Glinka and Smetana
Ruslan and Lyudmila, Glinka's second opera, was first performed in 1842. His earlier A Life for the Tsar has a place in the history books as ' the first Russian opera ', but in musical value Ruslan towers high above it. Glinka himself said it would be 'easy to turn out ten operas like A Life for the Tsar from the material of Ruslan '. So Ruslan is the first real masterpiece of Russian opera.
Von Biilow once said of Berlioz's
' Corsair ' Overture that it was ' as terse as a pistol shot', and the phrase is equally applicable to this overture of Glinka's. Nothing could be more concise and economical.
There is not a note thrown away, not a redundant bar in the whole piece. And Glinka nowhere shows greater command of the orchestra. Such masters of instrumentation as Derlioz and Rimsky-Korsakov have paid repeated tribute to Glinka's genius for brilliant, translucent scoring ; and one has only to listen to the Ruslan Overture to recognise it.