Russian music with the Berliner Philharmoniker

From the middle of the 19th century, Russian musical life flourished impressively – as this playlist shows. Interestingly enough, the conflict between the rather Western-oriented Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the Russophile group around Modest Mussorgsky contributed to enormous productivity. A broad spectrum of styles finally emerged in the 20th century; it ranges from the late-Romantic tone of Sergei Rachmaninov to the Neoclassicism of Igor Stravinsky. Of course, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich cannot be omitted from this compilation: they brought new life to the symphony, a genre that had been declared dead.

When Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was one of the first students to join the newly founded music conservatory in St Petersburg, he was taught by German and Italian teachers. At that time, it was not possible to speak of a specifically Russian form of classical music. This historical delay was to prove an advantage: composers such as Tchaikovsky combined the rich tradition of the country’s folk and church music with the achievements of the Central European tonal language, while the group of five around Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov developed a Russian idiom that went against the academic orientation. And while the German-Austrian tradition of the symphony ended with Gustav Mahler, the genre experienced a new heyday through Russian composers in the 20th century. This playlist gives an impression of the wealth of Russian music from the second half of the 19th century to the 1950s. The spectrum ranges from Tchaikovsky’s concreteness to the brusque expressiveness of Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov’s instrumental colourfulness – to the modernity of Alexander Scriabin. It also includes the late-Romantic tone of Rachmaninov and the vivid power of Prokofiev’s music, as well as the strict constructivism of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms.

Kirill Petrenko is the Berliner Philharmoniker’s first Russian chief conductor. The music of composers such as Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin and Stravinsky is particularly close to his heart – and this selection features him conducting works by these composers. Stravinsky was also a key composer during the tenure of Sir Simon Rattle. Kirill Petrenko’s predecessor also frequently explored the music of Dmitri Shostakovich. In the opening concert of the 2015/16 season, for example, he conducted the harrowing Fourth Symphony, which was written in the years when the composer was under extreme pressure from the hostile Soviet cultural bureaucracy. This selection of course includes his Tenth Symphony, written in the months after Stalin’s death. It was the only work by Shostakovich that Herbert von Karajan conducted regularly, including on a tour of Russia in the presence of the composer. This list also includes a recording with Mariss Jansons, one of the great Shostakovich conductors of the 20th century.

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