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2000
             
As part of worldwide celebrations of the 2000th birthday of Jesus Christ, a larger than life festival of Orthodox music started off in Moscow and other major Russian cities bringing together a plethora of church and secular choirs, including many junior and children's acts performing at the Conservatory Big Hall in Moscow and other major venues.
One of these concerts featured the country's finest bass singers so much favored by the Russian Orthodox Church whose archdeacons have always wowed listeners with their deep, richly-textured bottom line…
Another high point of the year was the 55th anniversary of Russia's hard-won victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. This country paid a terrible price losing nearly 30 million lives which means that in May 1945 each and every Russian family grieved the loss of a father, son or brother who fell for his country... The V-E Day is a very special and cherished day here in Russia…
In St.Petersburg, the Mariinsky Theater very much lived up to the occasion offering a new production of Sergei Prokofyev's War and Peace opera written during the war. Even though set during Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russian, the opera rings a clear bell connecting the two national tragedies separated by more than a century. Conductor Valery Gergiyev and artistic director Andron Konchalovsky did a great job underscoring this patriotic idea underlining the two Patriotic Wars…
Vladimir Putin, then Acting President, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair attended the premiere which, several months later, created such a big stir in Britain and the United States…
In June Nizhny Novgorod was hosting the seventh Andrei Sakharov music festival. The mere fact that the festival is named after one of the greatest scientists and human rights campaigners of all time has left an imprint all its own on the festival's program which is appropriately high style. Encouraged by the festival's Russian Art and Peace motto, performers from all over the world flock in to take part. This year the foreign presence was even more visible because the Sakharov festival is now part of the International Association of Music Festivals...
One of the biggest highlights of this year's event was the first performance of the Mass 2000 written expressly for the occasion by the American composer Joe Fitzmartin and performed by musicians from sister cities Philadelphia and Nizhny Novgorod…
In Moscow the December Nights festival was marking its 20th birthday. Always held on the premises of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the festival is a fascinating combination of music and painting.
Each year the festival offers a new subject. The one they tackled this year was dubbed as Music To Watch presenting XVI through XX century painters whose work was in this way or another associated with music. The concert programs are pretty free, though, offering stylistically diverse music written in different styles.
With the demise of the festivals' founding father Svyatoslav Richter, the event was now being taken over by the famous viola player Yuri Bashmet who was wrapping up a very successful year becoming, among other accomplishments, the first viola player to perform solo on the stage of Milan's venerable La Scala Theater. This and other Italy-related achievements earned Bashmet the very prestigious Order of the Italian Republic, the third foreign distinction owned by the famous Russian musician.
Another major foreign award of the year went to the St.Petersburg Choir. During a November 26 ceremony held at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, the conductor of Russia's oldest choir Vladislav Chernushenko was handed the prestigious Choir Prize which earlier had only been awarded to the best French acts for their excellent performance at last year's church music festival in France.
In mid-December the St.Petersburg Choir participated very actively in a Georgy Sviridov festival held in their native city on the Neva.
Georgy Sviridov has spent many years collaborating with the St.Petersburg Choir writing a whole cycle of Orthodox chants and prayers for them, which wrapped up his long and very productive career…
The festival marking the 85th birthday of the outstanding 20th century Russian composer was dubbed as St.Petersburg's Wreath For Sviridov.
In Moscow the Bolshoi's operatic diva Irina Arkhipova marked her 75th birthday with a major festival with months-long celebrations held all across the former Soviet Union. Arkhipova was bestowed with all imaginable titles, like that of a Goddess of the Arts, and lavished with priceless gifts…
The 75th birth anniversary of the great Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya was celebrated with equal pomp and circumstance with the world's best dancers and all leading Russian politicians all attending the concert where Plisetskaya unveiled some of her latest work…
Plisetskaya's husband, composer Rodion Shchedrin, took part in the first post-Soviet congress of the Composers' Union. During the 40 years of its existence, the union was at various times led by Dmitry Shostakovich, Georgy Sviridov and Rodion Shchedrin. Once a very prestigious and money-rich organization with pretty limited membership, the Union, just like the whole country, is living through very hard times. The general state of disrepair apparently brushed off on the union's members who offered a rather lackluster harvest of new works for the congress…
All the more fun we all had enjoying the sparkling melodies of the brilliant Russian composer Isaak Dunayevsky whose centennial birthday and 45 years of his demise we marked this past year…
Dunayevsky's music, so fresh, inspiring and popular in its day, is still very much alive once again giving Russians joy and hope for a better future. Born at the very start of the 20th century, Isaak Dunayevsky is one of its musical symbols.
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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