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1994
             
Composer Georgy Sviridov, a living legend, wraps up a cycle of church prayers and chants, drawing heavily on the Russian Orthodox tradition, which once gave start to all professional music in Russia.
It brought to an end several decades of hard work where Sviridov polished every little detail trying out different options. Now, the cycle was finally out and ready for the St.Petersburg Choir to take it up…
The solemn beauty of Sviridov's music immediately caught on with the listeners and became the high point of a major national music festival they held later in the year…
For many years Alfred Schnittke was in official disfavour, someone the Soviet music critics never tired of grinding their teeth on. In 1994, the very opposite was true with the critics hailing him as one of the trendiest composers around. And with good reason too, now that Schnittke was officially touted as the world's most widely performed composer.
In November Schnittke turned 60 but, bedridden in a German clinic, the terminally ill composer was definitely in no mood for celebration. Not so his friends though, who organized a larger-than-life Schnittke Festival in Moscow featuring such luminaries as Yuri Bashmet, Gidon Kremer, Mstislav Rostropovich and Mikhail Pletnev. Schnittke's piano-playing wife, Irina, also joined in, taking part in several concerts…
Meanwhile, President Boris Yeltsin extended his heartfelt greetings to the great 20th century composer in a little belated official recognition of his outstanding musical effort…
On March 18th they were marking the 150th birthday of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This Russian classic, once a naval officer who sailed around the world, wrote fifteen operas, brought up several generations of talented students at the St.Petersburg Conservatory he taught at and was also a devoted friend of Alexander Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky completing the operatic masterpieces they never lived to finish...
In St.Petersburg, the Mariinsky Theater marked the anniversary with a major Rimsky-Korsakov and the 20th Century festival, playing those of his operas, which defined the Russian classical music of the 19th century. The religiously-tinged Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh was one such composition…
The festival, initiated by Mariinsky's chief conductor Valery Gergiyev who also took part there, became the first retrospective of Rimsky-Korsakov's works…
On June the 10th the Tchaikovsky Music Competition started in Moscow and they decided very appropriately for the jury of the jubilee event to be made up of former winners of this very prestigious international showcase.
As it often happens, the good idea turned sour with the jurors, embracing different performing styles, failing to come to terms. As a result, no winners were named in three categories, the best-playing cellist going only as high as the fourth place. Singers were the only happy exception with the Grand Prix going to the 25-year-old Moscow Conservatory post graduate Khibla Gerzmava from Georgia…
Russia was playing host to a British culture festival held simultaneously with a visit here by Queen Elizabeth the Second. The festival offered a string of fascinating exhibitions and concerts, including those by the Westminster Abbey Choir. During their first ever performance in Russia, the 450 year-old choir offered a program of church and secular music written at various times in history.
In another "first", the youth symphony orchestra of the united Europe comes over playing a series of concerts in Russia. In 1994 the orchestra, alternatively led by the most prominent European conductors was under the baton of the Russian-born Moscow Conservatory graduate Vladimir Ashkenazi who, shortly after winning the 1962 Tchaikovsky Competition, married an Englishwoman and settled down in London.
Starting out as a pianist, Vladimir Ashkenazi was now better known as a conductor and it was the first time he had ever led an orchestra in Russia…
The European Youth Orchestra made a big splash in Russia and, after playing in Moscow and St.Petersburg, they took on several Russian musicians who had competed real hard to join this internationally-acclaimed outfit.
It's been a century since Modest Tchaikovsky unveiled his famous brother's house museum in Klin, a small town near Moscow. To keep alive the spirit of the great Russian composer who spent the ebbing years of his life there, leading musicians from around Russia and further afield regularly played concerts in the mansion's cosy dining room.
In Germany they set up the David Oistrakh Violin Academy initiated by Liana Isakadze who, in the late Sixties, studied in the great violinist's class at the Moscow Conservatory…
Another Oistrakh disciple, Gidon Kremer, became the first winner of the Dmitry Shostakovich award. Instituted by the famed viola player Yuri Bashmet and a group of leading Russian businessmen, the 25,000 dollar annual award has since been bestowed on the world's finest players.
In London, the Royal Music Academy names the Mariinsky Theater's operatic diva Galina Gorchakova the singer of the year. Apparently on the strength of Gorchakova's very successful world tour of 1993 which also saw her singing on stage at London's famous Covent Garden Theater...
Young Russian musicians, all scholarship holders of the New Names charity fund, play a series of sold-out concerts in Russia, Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland, entertaining, among others, Russia's Orthodox Patriarch Alexy the Second, Pope John Paul the Second, President Boris Yeltsin and Britain's Queen Elizabeth the Second. And, on the eve of the New Year of 1995, they came out on the venerable stage of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater…
The popular singer Iosif Kobzon was marking 35 years of his professional career. One can only be surprised just how omnivorous this man is having sung praises first to the Communist Party, then Gorbachev's Perestroika and now warming the people's hearts belting out retro tunes and playing to the younger, more dance-loving, crowds…
Iosif Kobzon goes on a nationwide anniversary tour and wraps up it up with a hours-long concert held at Moscow's most prestigious Rossiya Concert Hall ...
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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