Tone Poem Tuesday

Easter is coming, so in that vein, a concert overture by the great orchestral master Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His Russian Easter Festival Overture is a work that pays tribute to Easter and the Russian Orthodox liturgies. The composer actually uses a number of liturgical melodies and chants throughout the work, giving the piece a feel of being both older and newer than it actually is. Apparently in Russia Easter is called “the Bright Holiday”, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s overture teems with both a celebration of the Resurrection and a more pagan exultation in the coming of Spring.