The Tsar's Bride (Overture) - Rimsky-Korsakov

The Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) finished his opera The Tsar's Bride in 1899. This opera is a lurid melodrama set in the time of Ivan the Terrible, though this might hardly be guessed from its overture. However, this was a period when Rimsky was concerned with 'classicizing' his style, and the piece is best taken simply as a neat sonata structure built from highly abstractive music, though with what sounds like a sort of double recapitulation followed by a wistful new melody introducing the dying coda.