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1980
             
Moscow is playing host to the 22nd Summer Olympics. The United States, Britain and many other countries stay away from the Games protesting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The athletes, whose sporting life is so short, against their will, find themselves drawn into big politics…
And still, the Moscow Games go off pretty well bringing together thousands of athletes and scores of singers and dancers entertaining the participants and guests of the world's greatest sports extravaganza… The opening and closing ceremonies are really unforgettable, especially the very touching moment of putting out the Olympic Flame. Just as the giant flame was being lowered, hundreds of actors filling one of the stands of Moscow's huge Lenin Stadium, formed the picture of a crying Olympic Bear - the symbol of the 22nd Moscow Olympics. Simultaneously, its double - a giant inflated Olympic Bear, soared up into the air and the sounds of Alexandra Pakhmutova's new song, Moscow, Goodbye, reverberated through the dark Moscow night...
The Olympic Games inspired composer Eduard Artemyev to write an Ode to Sports, Karen Khachaturian came up with an Olympic Overture, Yevgeny Doga wrote his Olympic Suite and bands and people all around the country were singing David Tukhmanov's new Olympics 1980 song…
20 years on, the overlapping Olympic rings and smiling bear cubs still adorning the houses and fences outside Moscow, are the only reminder of the 22nd Summer Games. Well, we can add to this the countless figurines of small Olympic bears still in family possession around this country and an occasional radio music bringing back the sultry days in July when the Moscow Olympics were in full swing here…
The life of composer Boris Tchaikovsky is one endless chain of comparisons and parallels with his great 19th century namesake Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Well, Boris does take a back seat to Pyotr Ilyich, no doubt about that, but his music still blends perfectly with the 20th century musical palette. Just like his great precursor, Boris Tchaikovsky espouses Beauty coming in the form of free-flowing, inherently Russian, melodies.
In 1980 Boris Tchaikovsky completed the Sevastopol Symphony, already his third, which is set during the war and brings back the times of the heroic Soviet defense of the Black Sea fortress the composer himself once took part in…
Just like his other symphonies, Boris Tchaikovsky entrusts this one to Vladimir Fedoseyev and his Moscow Radio Big Symphony Orchestra. Fedoseyev lives up to the mark offering an absolutely stirring rendition, which earns the composer and the conductor the much-coveted State Prizes.
The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought the number of high-profile foreign guest tours to a mere trickle with the Swedish tenor Nikolai Gedda being a notable exception. Even though he carries a Swedish passport, Nikolai Gedda is ethnically Russian, whose parents emigrated shortly after the 1917 October revolution. Steeped in Russian music, Nikolai Gedda offers a program of songs written by Russian composers.
Throughout his 30 years on stage, Nikolai Gedda had, at various times, wowed audiences in Milan, Vienna, London and New York and now that his musical career was already on the low ebb, he was making his debut in the country his parents once emigrated from…
In the operatic department, the Bolshoi Theater diva Yelena Obraztsova performs for the first time with a Russian folk orchestra offering a charming and hugely successful presentation of folk songs and old Russian love songs.
In Moscow, choirmaster Igor Voronov sets up a professional male quartet who include in their opening program canticles written by Czar Ivan the Terrible. The 90 minute-long composition Igor Voronov wrote himself, features theological writings and letters written by the 16th century Russian ruler from the archives of the Trinity-St.Sergius Monastery near Moscow.
The new quartet is hugely popular with people flocking in to their concerts and buying up their records eager to look into the soul of the bloody medieval tyrant who took the monastic vows shortly before he died in 1584…
Russian musicians are still going strong in international competitions. The Moscow Radio's Big Children's Choir brings the house down performing at Nerpelt, Belgium with their masterful performance of medieval polyphonic music, folk songs, romantic miniatures and songs by modern-day composers.
Valery Leontyev wins the first prize participating in the Golden Orpheus song festival in Bulgaria. Hailing from the northern republic of Komi, he works under the philharmonic society in Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga.
Boasting a big and unusually-timbered voice, Leontyev wins glowing reviews in the local press. The praise lavished on him was very well deserved and Valery has since worked his way up to become Russia's number one pop singer…
In 1980 enter the Time Machine band. Its Fender-bending sharp-tongued lead singer and composer Andrei Makarevich writes songs which, unlike all that pseudo-patriotic music filling the airways, go right to the listeners' hearts and souls…
Young people all around the country are going crazy about The Time Machine, but the Soviet authorities feel something is fishy about the band and it is not until Mikhail Gorbachev's Peterstroika campaign that The Time Machine finally starts performing full time ...
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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