Christmas Eve: Polonaise

Rimsky-Korsakov’s fifth opera Christmas Eve - which was first performed in St Petersburg in 1895 - is based on the same Gogol story as Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki and Solovyov’s Vakula the Smith. Evidently a story with powerful musical reverberations for Russian composers, it is an account of the adventures of Vakula the smith who wins his bride by securing for her the Empress’s slippers after riding to St Petersburg on the Devil’s back to acquire them. Certainly, it gave Rimsky-Korsakov the chance, as he said, “to write a lot of interesting music.” One of the most colourful episodes is the polonaise at the Imperial court - a sonorous choral dance in the opera and a splendid orchestral piece in the composer’s own arrangement for concert performance. It is a brilliant inspiration carried on the characteristic strutting rhythm of the polonaise, swelling with proudly aristocratic melody and resounding with ceremonial fanfares.