The second of Glinka's three settings of Pushkin poetry, Ya pomnyu chudnoye mgnoven'ye (I recall that wonderful moment) was written in 1840 while he was deep into his setting of Pushkin's magic mock-epic opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. It opens with a lightly Romantic melody in the upper register of the piano, which comes to a full cadence before the voice enters with the same melody transformed into a tenderly lyrical tune of ineffable expressive heights. But, following Pushkin's poem, the music becomes first fierce and furious, then achingly dramatic and deeply tragic, then furious again before the return of the tenderly lyrical tune transformed by all the song has been through.

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