A marvellous performance, historically informed and caught absolutely on the wing. Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila, with its fairy-tale plot and quicksilver, feather-light orchestrational touch, is delightful. It will amuse and touch in equal measure - how lucky the audience was to be there at the Bolshoi in April last year; and how lucky are we, now, to enjoy the immediacy of the event.
Musicological detective work (and from the extensive and detailed booklet note, that’s the only real phrase for it) has led to this, the fullest and most complete Ruslan yet. The actual performance has all the advantages of live performance (immediacy and a real edge), yet few of the disadvantages (a miraculously silent audience; orchestral playing is consistently excellent and recording quality also, except for some distancings).
Long the piece may be, but when it sparkles like this, Wagner-like, it banishes time. The initial impression is that we may not be detained too long, anyway, so fast is the opening of the Overture. But it soon emerges this is to be a dancing, rather than turbo-powered curtain raiser, more of a bustling Russian Marriage of Figaro Overture. So, not as dynamic as some, certainly (and the catalogue is filled to bursting with versions of the overture alone), yet one that rather prepares the ground for the substantial opera to follow. The orchestra, anyway, has a chance to assert its excellence, as it does throughout not only in its sensitive accompaniments, but also in the purely orchestral numbers (the light ballet in Act 4, for example, or the extended, atmospheric entr’acte between Acts 1 and 2, or the delicate yet regal Turkish Dances in Act 4).
In fact the music of the Overture returns at the very end of the opera, its signified revealed, of course, as the jubilation so inherent in itself. Listeners familiar with the overture might be interested to hear the operatic flowering of the lyrical, cello-dominated melody in the second part of Ruslan’s Aria that begins Act 2 (CD2, Track 2, 1’05ff, ‘O Lyudmila, Lel promised us happiness …’).
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Glinka’s score is chock-full of delights. However its miracle lies in the ability to deliver a coherent whole rather than a succession of ‘numbers’. Do try to hear this set, even if you own Gergiev (Philips 486 746-2) — Vedernikov restores Ruslan, intact and complete, to its rightful place.
Source.
Musicological detective work (and from the extensive and detailed booklet note, that’s the only real phrase for it) has led to this, the fullest and most complete Ruslan yet. The actual performance has all the advantages of live performance (immediacy and a real edge), yet few of the disadvantages (a miraculously silent audience; orchestral playing is consistently excellent and recording quality also, except for some distancings).
Long the piece may be, but when it sparkles like this, Wagner-like, it banishes time. The initial impression is that we may not be detained too long, anyway, so fast is the opening of the Overture. But it soon emerges this is to be a dancing, rather than turbo-powered curtain raiser, more of a bustling Russian Marriage of Figaro Overture. So, not as dynamic as some, certainly (and the catalogue is filled to bursting with versions of the overture alone), yet one that rather prepares the ground for the substantial opera to follow. The orchestra, anyway, has a chance to assert its excellence, as it does throughout not only in its sensitive accompaniments, but also in the purely orchestral numbers (the light ballet in Act 4, for example, or the extended, atmospheric entr’acte between Acts 1 and 2, or the delicate yet regal Turkish Dances in Act 4).
In fact the music of the Overture returns at the very end of the opera, its signified revealed, of course, as the jubilation so inherent in itself. Listeners familiar with the overture might be interested to hear the operatic flowering of the lyrical, cello-dominated melody in the second part of Ruslan’s Aria that begins Act 2 (CD2, Track 2, 1’05ff, ‘O Lyudmila, Lel promised us happiness …’).
<...>
Glinka’s score is chock-full of delights. However its miracle lies in the ability to deliver a coherent whole rather than a succession of ‘numbers’. Do try to hear this set, even if you own Gergiev (Philips 486 746-2) — Vedernikov restores Ruslan, intact and complete, to its rightful place.
Source.
Mikhail GLINKA. Ruslan and Lyudmila
Colin CLARKE, MusicWeb International,
June 2004
June 2004
