The Russian Easter Festival Overture - Sheherazade - Dubinuska - The Flight of the Bumblebee

L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande directed by Ernest Ansermet
Nicolaj Andreevič Rimskij-KorsakovDecca 2004


If we stifle the Mystery as a dimension of our relationship with people and things, all reality becomes like a game; it falls to pieces – looks and hands split it into parts that have no connection with each other.
In this alternative lies the drama of life. Listening to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Festival Overture beautiful music, we perceive this very well. As a contrast, we can imagine a discotheque: a flood of sensory provocations with no thought or structure behind them, whose goal is surrender to a tremble.
The alternative in life is between the response to the Mystery which we are called to give, and living according to the rule of “whatever I like.” The task that has been given to us is for us and, as an example, for the world; this task is for the world. Christ, alone, died to call the world back to the fact
of the Father; thus, no matter how few we are, we are called to this task to call the world back. There is no middle ground between the task and “whatever I please.”

(Excerpt from the introduction by Luigi Giussani to the booklet enclosed in the CD)