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1987
             
In Leningrad, composer Valery Gavrilin surprises the audience writing, of all things, a ballet. It had so happened that, preparing a choreographic version of Anton Chekhov's The St.Anne's Cross story, director Alexander Belinsky invited the famous dancer Vladimir Vasilyev to supervise the production and assigned the main part to the inimitable ballerina Yekaterina Maximova. The only missing element was music and, after going through numerous musical proposals, the authors finally settled on several pieces offered by Valery Gavrilin. Putting these pieces together they obtained a composition that was cohesive and very consonant with the ballet's subject matter. They showed it to the author who, very much surprised, agreed to give the whole thing a try…
And try they did with a resounding success! The filmed version of the Anyuta ballet took the music community by storm and had screening rights bought by a staggering 114 television companies from all around the world.
The new ballet was first staged in Naples, moving on to Riga, Chelyabinsk and, finally, onto the Bolshoi stage in Moscow…
The Bolshoi Opera, meanwhile, offered a new dramatization of Tchaikovsky's opera Mazepa. It was also the first time the famous film director Sergei Bondarchuk, of the War and Piece fame, tried his hand in opera. He was especially successful in staging crowd scenes…
The new opera was musically supervised by the conductor Algis Ziurajtis who put together an absolutely stellar lineup of singers with the parts of the renegade Ukrainian leader and his young lover Maria sung by Yuri Mazurok and Tamara Milashkina.
In the fall, Ivan Monigetti holds in Moscow a festival of old-day music. A few years before that, the acclaimed cellist and a winner of many high-profile international competitions raised eyebrows falling for Baroque music and taking up the long-since-forgotten viola. By that time he had extensively honed his skills playing with a posse of same-mannered soloists and orchestras and he was now all set to make old music an ever-present part of modern-day Russian music…
The Urban Musicians ensemble from Estonia was not new to the Moscow festival. Their music is a strange mix of Western and Oriental music, which was so characteristic of what people listened to in medieval port cities…
Music by Johann Sebastian Bach ruled supreme during the traditional December Nights music festival in Moscow where top-flight performers from Germany, France, Ecuador, the United States, Austria and Russia showcase their skills playing in the event's 14 programs.
The concerts were played against the background of an exhibition of engravings by Albrecht Durer on lease from the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, among them a series of wood engravings from the painter's famous Apocalypse cycle.
They were also holding on the festival's sidelines a display of stringed instruments from the State Collection, among them violins, violas and cellos made by the great Italian luthiers Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari. Old and modern instruments crafted by internationally-acclaimed Russian makers also attracted a great deal of attention…
Norilsk, a small workers' town beyond the Arctic Circle, plays host to a Dmitry Shostakovich music festival organized by the philharmonic society in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. Tickets to all the 12 concerts are sold out long before the festival begins…
In the old northern Russian city of Archangel they open a new concert hall perfectly suited for chamber and organ music performances…
In Ufa, the capital of the Bashkir Autonomous republic in southern Urals, they unveil another concert hall designed to accommodate big choirs and orchestras.
Leningrad gets a chamber opera theater all its own directed by the young and restless Yuri Alexandrov whose inspired productions quickly make him famous the world over…
The 12th Glinka National Singers' competition brings together 234 young performers from across the country. The top awards go to those whose names have since become the Who's Who of world opera…
In the women's department, the winner is mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina. It's been a year since she graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory and joined the Kirov Opera and Ballet theater, now Mariinsky…
In the men's competition, the first prize goes to the Krasnoyarsk-based baritone Dmitry Khvorostovsky…
Young Russian musicians keep wowing audiences at major international events, like the Ferruccio Buzoni competition in Bolzano, Italy, won by pianist Valery Kuleshov.
In Prague, the Russian pop singer Alexander Serov wins the Grand Prix of the Inter-Talent festival…
Grounded for a several straight days by heavy fog, Serov only managed to arrive when the event was already going through its final stages. He still managed to persuade the jury members to just let him sing out of competition. When he did, it became immediately clear to all that the Russian was a hands down winner…
In 1987 they posthumously awarded the State prize to the late bard, poet and Taganka Theater actor Vladimir Vysotsky who died in 1980…
Vladimir Vysotsky was a national hero adored by millions of people around the country. His nationwide popularity didn't sit well with the Soviet authorities though who feared him and banned his songs… It took the powers-that-be seven long years to finally recognize the great Russian singer and poet…
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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