Rimsky Korsakov Russian Easter Festival Overture r rc Lovro von Matačić Philharmonia Orchestra 1080p 30fps H264 128kbit AAC

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Nicolaï Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Russian Easter Festival, Op. 36 (2025 Remastered, London 1965)

Philharmonia Orchestra
Conductor: Lovro von Matačić
Recorded in 1965, at London
New mastering in 2025 by AB for https://classicalmusicreference.com/
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Herbert Glass: « In Russian tradition, Easter is referred to as “the bright holiday,” and it is this nomenclature that Rimsky-Korsakov evokes in his musical marriage of Christian ritual and pagan enthusiasm; an ode to nature’s blazing rebirth after winter’s dark somnolence.

The Russian Easter Festival was started early in 1888 and completed some eight months later, at the same time as Scheherazade. The overture was presented to the public just before Christmas of ’88 by the Russian Symphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg, of which Rimsky had recently been appointed chief conductor.

The following is taken from the composer’s own analysis, as it appears in his posthumously published autobiography, My Musical Life:
“During the summer of 1888 I finished The Bright Holiday [as he would usually refer to it], an Easter Overture on themes from the Obikhod [a collection of Russian Orthodox Church music]... The lengthy, slow introduction... on the theme ‘Let God Arise!,’ alternating with the ecclesiastical theme ‘An Angel Cried,’ appeared to me in the beginning as Isaiah’s prophecy of the resurrection of Christ. The gloomy colors of the Andante lugubre seemed to depict the holy sepulchre that had shone with ineffable light at the moment of the resurrection...

“The beginning of the Allegro, ‘Let them also that hate Him flee before Him,’ leads to the holiday mood of the Orthodox church service on Christ’s matins. The solemn trumpet voice of the Archangel is then displaced by a tonal reproduction of the joyous, dance-like tolling of the bells, alternating with an evocation of the sexton’s rapid reading and the chant of the priest’s reading the glad tidings of the Evangel. The Obikhod theme, ‘Christ is risen,’ which is the subsidiary part of the Overture, appears amid the trumpet-blasts and bell-tolling, constituting a triumphant coda.

“In this Overture were thus combined reminiscences of the ancient prophecy, of the gospel narrative, and also a general picture of the Easter service with its pagan merrymaking. The capering and leaping of King David before the Ark, do they not give expression to the same mood as the idol-worshippers’ dance? Surely, the Russian Obikhod is dance music of the church. And do not the waving beards of the priests and sextons clad in white vestments and surplices, intoning ‘Beautiful Easter’ transport the imagination to pagan times? And all those Easter loaves and the glowing tapers! How far a cry from the philosophic teachings of Christ! The legendary and heathen side of the holiday, the transition from the gloomy and mysterious evening of Passion Saturday to the unbridled pagan-religious merrymaking on Easter Sunday morning is what I was eager to reproduce in my Overture.”

In keeping with the Romantic era’s preoccupation with a program (i.e., story line) for non-verbal music, Rimsky decided to ask a “real writer” (in his estimation) to provide the first published edition of the overture with a poetic scenario, commissioning a friend, one Count Golyenishchev-Kutuzov, to execute the task. But the composer regarded the result as too precious to convey the “primitive energy” of the piece. Thus, Rimsky set to work himself on a program, a marvel of discursiveness, heavily laced with quotations from the Old and New Testaments, but ending in a blaze of verbal glory that matches that of the music’s exultant concluding section: “‘Resurrexit!’ sings the chorus of heavenly angels to the sound of the archangels’ trumpets and the fluttering of the wings of seraphim. ‘Resurrexit!’ sing the priests in the temple, amid clouds of incense, by the light of innumerable candles, to the chiming of triumphant bells.” »

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