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TCHAIKOVSKI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA TURNS 75


L.Roshchina, O.Bugrova
 Moscow has hosted a festival of the Tchaikovski Symphony Orchestra timed for the orchestra's 75th birthday. The festival will be on from November 28th to December 25th.
The festival's seven concerts including in the Austrian capital will introduce the Moscow and Vienna public to Russian and foreign classics: Tchaikovski and Beethoven, Scriabin and Wagner, Shostakovich and Maler, Sviridov and Shchedrin. The new compositions on the program have been written specifically for the jubilee. All concerts will pass under the direction of the orchestra's artistic director and chief conductor Vladimir Fedoseev. The special title of the festival is "Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov" meaning "Faith, Hope, Love" which are often given to women in Russia and denote three sacred Christian virtues.
"Not by chance have the three symbols been picked to name the festival, - Vladimir Fedoseev said. - Our orchestra is our faith, my faith and out public's faith. Hope signifies hopes for a better future for us, an improvement. Step by step we're moving to take yet more heights in art. And of course nothing happens without love! Love in our orchestra thrives and it helps the musicians greatly".
The Tchaikovski Symphony Orchestra was set up in Moscow in 1930 as a national radio orchestra. Throughout its subsequent history it has seen a host of remarkable conductors, including Nikolai Golovanov and Gennady Rozhdesvenski. Performing with the National Radio Orchestra in different years were Leopold Stokovski (USA) and German Abendrot (Germany). From its very first days the orchestra oriented itself at an extensive and diverse repertoire playing pieces of bygone centuries and a vast number of contemporary works. The orchestra was the first to interpret many of the new compositions by the Russian musical geniuses Sergei Prokofieff and Dmitry Shostakovich.
The orchestra's time with Georgy Sviridov left a powerful impact on its subsequent glory. An acknowledged classic of the 20th century Russian music, Georgy Sviridov said of the orchestra: "Ear-soothing performance along with the sheen and impeccability of technique makes up the orchestra's most valuable feature and originality".
Since 1974 the Tachaikovski Orchestra has been directed my maestro Vladimir Fedoseev. Today it is one of the most popular of Russian orchestras abroad going on regular tours to Europe, Asia and North America and appearing in all sorts of prestigious contests, including the Edinburgh Festival of Arts, which this year awarded the orchestra with the Golden Angel Prize given for the best musical event. Foreign critics refer to Vladimir Fedoseev's orchestra as "a symphony music bastion".
On the vitality of the "orchestra organism" Vladimr Fedoseev once said: "If the interaction between the director and orchestra is good enough and the two get on nicely, the orchestra will live on as long as possible".
"I love my orchestra, - Vladimir Fedoseev said. - We've been together for more than 30 years. I know each musician by his or her first and second names, I know of each member's family and what their kids do. This year I was particularly lucky - I worked with the best of American orchestras, from Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburg. But never will I leave my beloved orchestra for any of them".
During the festival the Tchaikovski Orchestra lovers will have every chance to admire the group as a whole and the best of its musicians separately. One of the evenings on the program is called "An Orchestra of Soloists". The Tchaikovski Orchestra boasts super professional instrumentalists who will be playing solo. They are harp player Emilia Moskvitina, flute player Maria Fedotova and violinist Mikhail Shestakov.
Vladimir Fedoseev is sure that an orchestra is a "unity of individualities". For this very reason his orchestra has struck such a tremendous success in the world of music.
 

YEARS BYGONE IN RECOLLECTIONS BY COUNTESS UVAROVA

Y.Karpova
 The "Alpha-Design" Moscow Publishers presents "Years Bygone. Happy Days Long Gone" by Countess Uvarova. Praskovia Uvarova, a scholar, patroness of the arts and a public figure, wrote her memoirs in the early 1920s while in exile in Serbia. The book was prepared for publication by Natalya Strizhova, a Russian State Historical Museum employee.
"Praskovia Sergeevna writes of her early days' experiences up to the year 1918, - Natalya Strizhova said. - Her recollections are priceless, because they embrace such a vast time span and give an integral picture of her remarkable life and the lives of those near her".
Praskovia Uvarova lived an interesting but no-easy life. Born in 1840 into a noble family she revered the legacy of her ancestors, who were historians, enlighteners and military commanders. Her father, Prince Sergei Shcherbatov, wanted good education for his children. Praskovia's teachers were the prominent linguist Fedor Buslaev, artist Alexei Savrasov and pianist Nikolai Rubinstein. In addition to excellent education the young princess was beautiful, graceful and smart. At one of the balls she attracted the attention of the great Russian author Leo Tolstoi. The encounter left a tangible impact on Tolstoi, who portrayed the young princess's features in one of the characters of his monumental work "Anna Karenina" - Kitty Shcherbatski. The similarity was acknowledged by all literature experts. The name of Praskovia Shcherbatova would have stayed in the notes to Tolstoi's novel for ever but for the happy marriage that changed her life.
At 18 the princess marries Count Alexei Uvarov, a historian, an archaeologist and a connoisseur of antiquity. The young wife gets carried away by her husband's scholarly work, which by the yardstick of the middle of the 19th century was rare if not altogether strange. Right after marriage the spouses left for Rome, then to Naples and Florence, where Praskovia absorbed the basics of European culture.
In the subsequent years she is a mother of six and a full-time supporter of her husband, who sets up the Moscow Archaeological Society and the Russian Historical Museum. One of his awards, a medal he was given by a congress of archaeologists, the count gave to his wife Praskovia. Engraved on the medal was the inscription "To Best Employee".
After Alexei Uvarov's death in 1884 Praskovia assumes the duties of chairperson of the Moscow Archaeological Society. The countess then acquires professorship first at Tartu University in Estonia and then at the Petersburg Archaeological Institute and writes treatises, 174 all in all. Some books - 'Caucasus. Traveller's Notes" and "Burial Mounds of the North Caucasus" - Praskovia wrote in the wake of her nine expeditions to the Caucasus. The books trigger researcher interest to this day.
In 1895 Praskovia Uvarova is elected honourary member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
Besides her passion for archaeology Countess Uvarova did a lot of charitable work and presided on the pedagogical board of the school opened by one of her charities. And since no women in Russia had ever occupied so high a position before her Uvarova's appointment was approved by a special decree from Emperor Nicholas II.
Despite that massive a scope of interests and public activities Praskovia Uvarova never stopped being a loving mother and an attractive woman, which is a good example to follow for women of today. Slim and elegant, always dressed with immaculate taste, she was a lady with a generous halo of chestnut hair and chiseled features - the image of her that has survived in works by artists and photographers. The new edition has portraits of both the countess and her family. In addition to illustrations and journal entries, the book has Uvarova's and her husband's letters.
After the 1917 Revolution Praskovia Uvarova left Russia. Despite the difficulties of life in exile she never lost spirit and spent the last days of her life writing memoirs. She died in Serbia in 1924. Countess Uvarova played a remarkable role in Russia's scientific and cultural life. Academician Dmitry Shvydkovski, a member of the Culture Council under the Russian president, comments on the new book.
"The life of the Uvarov family is inseparable from Russia. They make one single whole and this produces the strongest of impression".

DDT ROUNDS UP ITS TOUR

T.Zavialova

On December 4th the "Olympic" Concert Hall in Moscow hosted the final concert of the unprecedented in scope tour of the DDT rock band that covered major cities of Russia and other post-Soviet republics and lasted from June to December 2005.
For DDT the year is a jubilee one marking the group's 25th birthday. Yuri Shevchuk, the group's leader, recalls: "It was the autumn of 1980. I, Rustam Asanbaev, Volodya Sigachev and Gena Rodin were wandering through the streets, four unknown rockers strolling on a late autumn day. By then we had made the hits "Don' Shoot", "Daughter" and 5 or 6 others. We were searching for a good name for out band, we felt the time was right. We never thought back then that we'd one day play on big stages - in those days we were playing "proletarian" hard rock and rhythm&blues. For some reason we liked the name DDT, an abbreviation for anti-bug and anti-roach detergent on the one hand, and on the other it meant "Fools from the House of Machinery", where they gave us permission to rehearse. Now I think the name lays no rules on us".
The DDT group worked its way up hard and long. The Soviet authorities cancelled its concerts and banned some of its songs that make us think of what is going on around us. In the words of Yuri Shevchuk, the group always stayed away from politics and remained loyal to its civil duty. The first official album of DDT came out in 1988. DDT gradually acquired popularity and was becoming one of the most popular bands whose songs were heard everywhere. In the late 1980s the group was touring all over the country building up an audience for itself and went with concerts abroad, to the United States, France, Japan, Hungary, Poland, Britain and Israel. At that time Yuri Shevchuk writes both "political" poster songs and philosophical and lyrical pieces. "In the Last Autumn" is all about the life of poets in Russia.
Not for a single year of its 25-year history has DDT stopped searching for the new. The 1990s marked a new stage for the group, when the musicians cut down the number of concerts opting for fewer but thoroughly prepared ones united by a single concept and program. The new songs had a stronger Russian melody component to them that came from folk music and there appeared a large number of reflective ballads. A new studio album has now become a tradition for the group. Particularly successful with the public was the concert album of the late 1990s "Born in USSR". Many then attempted to attribute Shevchuk to the harmless Russian rock "veterans" playing the old hits. But the civil and compromise-free component of the songs as well as Yuri Shevchuk's undying "rock-n-roll" protest gave the Russian society yet another jolt.
DDT's jubilee tour has been a great hit: houses and stadiums packed everywhere, with an open-air concert in Vladivostok gathering more than 100 thousand. In December the musicians are going on a string of foreign tours in Germany, Britain, Canada and the United States, where they are quite likely to enjoy equally sweeping success.

 

  12/01/2005 BACK TO MAIN PAGE

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