1901 | 1902 | 1903 | 1904 | 1905
1906 | 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | 1910
1911 | 1912 | 1913 | 1914 | 1915
1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920
1921 | 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925
1926 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930
1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934 | 1935
1936 | 1937 | 1938 | 1939 | 1940
1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945
1946 | 1947 | 1948 | 1949 | 1950
1951 | 1952 | 1953 | 1954 | 1955
1956 | 1957 | 1958 | 1959 | 1960
1961 | 1962 | 1963 | 1964 | 1965
1966 | 1967 | 1968 | 1969 | 1970
1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975
1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 | 1980
1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990
1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995
1996
             
The music world was marking the 90th birthday of Dmitry Shostakovich, long hailed as a 20th century classic whose music was played all around the world. Shostakovich anniversary festivals were being held everywhere. In Russia, the Firebird concert company held a major Shostakovich and World Music Culture festival bringing together the very best interpreters of Shostakovich's music, among them the philharmonic symphony orchestra from the composer's hometown of St.Petersburg. It was that very orchestra, then led by his good friend Yevgeny Mravinsky, that Shostakovich entrusted with the first performance of many of his major works. In Moscow, the orchestra is alternatively conducted by Maxim Shostakovich, the composer's son, Maris Yansons and Yuri Temirkanov who now leads the world-famous outfit.
Yuri Temirkanov included in the festival's program the Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony Shostakovich wrote in the Nazi-besieged Leningrad during the war.
Also on the program was a concert performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the opera Shostakovich loved best. Met with glowing reviews when it first came out in 1934, the opera received a terrible thrashing only two years later after an unsigned article entitled Chaos Instead of Music, run by the Communist party mouthpiece, the Pravda newspaper, permanently shelved the opera. During the Sixties, Shostakovich, trying to save his pet composition, had to revamp the Lady and that was the only way he could have it finally staged again. And now, Mstislav Rostropovich decided to get back to the original score…
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was played in concert for two days running and then for two more nights in Moscow - each time to packed houses of people stunned by the breathtakingly beautiful music…
Mstislav Rostropovich and the festival's organizers donated all the proceeds from the concerts to build in Moscow the magnificent Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
In 1996 Shostakovich's music took center stage also during the now traditional Andrei Sakharov music festival in Nizhny Novgorod. Incidentally, it was precisely here that Rostropovich and local conductor Israel Gusman organized the first Shostakovich festival 34 years before. The two met again and once again the majestic sounds of Shostakovich's Concerto for cello and orchestra reverberated across the spacious hall of the local philharmonic society…
The Moscow Conservatory was marking its 180th anniversary and the many top-flight musicians it once spawned were now giving a series of charity concerts donating the proceeds to their alma mater, which, like the whole country, was living through very hard times… On December 24 the Conservatory Big Hall played host to a major gala concert featuring megastars like conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov, violinists Viktor Tretyakov and Vladimir Spivakov, pianist Nikolai Petrov, violist Yuri Bashmet and a host of no less renowned former graduates, now professors all… The concert held in a jam-packed hall lasted for nearly five hours!
The brilliant violinist Viktor Tretyakov marked 50 years of his stage career with a series of concerts in Moscow and his Siberian hometown of Krasnoyarsk. Tretyakov became famous in 1966 when he, then a 20 year-old Conservatory student, won the Tchaikovsky international competition. Such contests were very rare back in those days and gold medallists won quick popularity.
Viktor Tretyakov has since become Russia's number one violinist wowing his listeners not so much with his technical flash as with his heartfelt expression and with refined sensitivity that is all his own…
The outstanding operatic diva Galina Vishnevskaya was marking her 70th birthday. Long since retired, Galina has written a book about her turbulent life and about the people she lived and worked with. The book, already published in the West, finally came out in Russia and was selling like hot cakes. Some people found it pretty embarrassing to read because the author named those who harassed her and her great husband, Mstislav Rostropovich, during the Soviet years, just as they did their good old friend Dmitry Shostakovich. She made a clean breast of what was happening in the officially-pampered Bolshoi Theater, about her personal encounters with Communist big shots.
Another great Russian musician, Gidon Kremer also took to writing publishing the Fragments of Childhood - a book of intimate, low key, memoirs.
Even though he had long been living in the West, Kremer unveiled his book in Russia, along with a new concert program based on music written by Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. Gidon Kremer led an international orchestra in a memorable presentation of Piazzolla's fiery and unforgettable tangos.
In Moscow, the Bolshoi Theater takes up the hugely popular Italian operas La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi and Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti. European classics had never been very much on the repertoire of Russia's oldest musical theater, which had always asserted its preference for Russian music. Moreover, the Bolshoi company had just lost a number of leading performers who had left seeking fame and fortune in the West. Small wonder that critics were pretty pessimistic about the upcoming premieres. The young singers proved them all wrong though, offering some really good quality bel canto, especially Bolshoi's up and coming tenor Badri Maisuradze.
And we now move on to meet Dr.Watson, not the affable character from Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes, but a popular Russian band whose members sing half-forgotten hits of the Thirties, Forties, Fifties and Sixties. Their music mellows the hearts of the older listeners bringing back sweet memories of the time when they were so young and restless… Not so the youngsters though who took it all as a funny and a little pathetic throwback into the past…
As the New Year was drawing closer, the time-tested oldies were now being taken up by the more hip Russian bands which brought them all together in a musical melodrama called The Old Songs About the Main Thing. The latter thing meaning love of course…
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


BACK TO MAIN PAGE