Der Freischütz, Op. 77: Overture

Weber's overture to his opera Der Freischütz is one of the most structurally dramatic pieces in the orchestral repertoire — a miniature tone poem that tells the opera's entire story before a word is sung. It opens in the forest: low strings and horns create a hushed, expectant atmosphere, the kind of stillness in which you are aware of your own breathing. Then comes the first horn chorale, four horns in harmony, and the sound is almost sacred, dappled with light. But the darkness follows quickly: the strings begin a trembling agitation, the woodwinds hiss, and the brass cut through with something altogether more sinister. Weber was working at the edge of the emerging Romantic style — he died young, before Schubert — but this overture sounds as if it invented the supernatural register in orchestral music. The famous Wolf's Glen scene, in which the opera's antagonist casts magic bullets at midnight, is prefigured in the central section by music of genuine menace. Then the tension lifts: the main theme of the opera's heroine arrives in the strings, hopeful and singing, and the overture builds from there to a blazing, triumphant conclusion. You reach for it when you want music with genuine narrative spine.