570195 bk Tchaikovsky US 13/11/06 08:24 Page 8 “Dear Boris Alexandrovich! Do not be vexed with the result of the exam. When I come back to Moscow, I will tell you the details of the discussion that ensued after listening Boris to your Symphony. There were interesting thoughts from some members of the examining board. As TCHAIKOVSKY for me, I am vexed with the results of the exam not less, but even more than you. Be steadfast and be the knight of the art. I believe in your Symphony No. 1 great composer’s talent. All that transpired convinced me even more that I am right... The Murmuring Forest Yours, After the Ball Dmitry Shostakovich” Volgograd Philharmonic Orchestra Letter from Dmitry Shostakovich to Boris Tchaikovsky (1947) after the Edward Serov exam where his First Symphony was displayed. At the threshold to 1948 the work did not receive the Saratov Conservatory highest grade from the examining board but made a profound Symphony Orchestra impression on Shostakovich. Kirill Ershov 8.570195 8 570195 bk Tchaikovsky US 13/11/06 08:24 Page 2 The Boris Tchaikovsky Society, a public non-profit organization, was Boris founded in Moscow in late 2002 and registered in 2003. Among the founders and members of the Society are composers, including pupils of Boris Tchaikovsky, musicologists and musical enthusiasts. The composer’s TCHAIKOVSKY widow, Yanina-Irena Iossifovna Moshinskaya, is also a founder of the (1925-1996) Society. The honorary members of the Society include Rudolf Barshai, Victor Pikaizen, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Edward Serov, and Karen Khachaturian. The activities of the Society are supported by Mstislav Symphony No. 1 32:17 Rostropovich, Galina Vishnevskaya, Valentin Berlinsky, Andrei Eshpai, Roman Ledenyov, Andrei Golovin, Valery Kikta and Alexander Rudin. The 1 Moderato 10:17 Society is open to foreign members and boasts a number of members from 2 Allegro marcato 5:54 Brazil, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, the United States and Great Britain. Among the Society’s goals are the study of Tchaikovsky’s 3 Largo 7:50 legacy, the dissemination of his music and the support of events connected 4 Allegretto 8:16 with his music. The Society has assisted in issues of several CDs on different labels, including world première recordings; assisted in the preparation of a Suite: The Murmuring Forest 13:26 Chamber Music Festival devoted to the music of Boris Tchaikovsky (the first in the world) in De Rode Pomp Hall, Ghent (Belgium, 2004), 5 I. Moderato 3:09 performances of orchestral and chamber works in the United Kingdom, 6 France, Denmark, Germany, Japan, and some other events. The Society II. Moderato 1:35 welcomes everyone who admires the music of this great Russian composer. 7 III. Allegro 2:19 It will be delighted to answer any inquiries and to send scores. 8 IV. Molto vivace 2:03 9 V. Andante 4:20 Website: www.bt_ms.da.ru Suite: After the Ball 16:54 These recordings were organized by The Boris Tchaikovsky Society (Russia) 0 I. Introduction 1:57 and made possible owing to generous support from Haden Freeman Ltd, U.K., ! II. Waltz 1:51 and a grant from The Russian Performing Arts Foundation @ III. Reminiscence* 2:32 (“Fond Russkoe Ispolnitelskoe Iskusstvo”) # IV. Mazurka 3:12 $ V. At Home* 2:02 % VI. March 4:17 ^ VII. Conclusion 1:03 The Boris Tchaikovsky Society acknowledges with thanks Nigel Hirst (Manchester), *with Lolita Angert, Piano Maria Soboleva (Moscow), Vladimir Novozhilov (Moscow), The Library of the Russian State Musical Centre of Radio & TV, and the Society’s members in Switzerland and Russia for their kind support and assistance. 8.570195 27 8.570195 570195 bk Tchaikovsky US 13/11/06 08:24 Page 6 Saratov Conservatory Symphony Orchestra Boris Tchaikovsky (1925-1996) Symphony No. 1 • Suite: The Murmuring Forest • Suite: After the Ball The Saratov Conservatory Symphony Orchestra was created just after the Conservatory was opened, in 1912. It is the first Russian provincial conservatory and the third in Russia, after St Petersburg and Moscow. From 1935 the In a career that spanned the last half of the twentieth of thematic identity, a single-movement Violin Concerto Conservatory took the name of Leonid Sobinov, the famous Russian tenor. Following tradition, the artistic director Century, the composer Boris Tchaikovsky towered high (1969) that shuns the time-honoured musical practice of and chief conductor of the orchestra was usually also the artistic director and chief conductor of the Saratov among his Soviet contemporaries. His work received repetition, and a five-movement Piano Concerto (1971) Philharmonic Orchestra. Chief conductors of the Saratov Conservatory Symphony Orchestra have included such unalloyed praise from the most prominent musical figures, all of whose elements derive from primitive rhythmic prominent musicians as Nathan Faktorovich, Martyn Nersesyan, and Yuri Aronovich. For many years Roman Shostakovich, Rostropovich, Kondrashin, Barshai, and patterns. His orchestral compositions, such as his Theme Matsov worked with the orchestra, which has also performed under the baton of such famous conductors as Fedoseyev, and was represented on more than twenty and Eight Variations (1973) and the tone-poems Wind of Mstislav Rostropovich, Karl-Wilhelm Brandt, Konstantin Saradzhev, Nisson Shkarovsky, Gennady Provatorov, and Melodiya LPs, few of which circulated outside the Soviet Siberia and Juvenile (both of 1984), reveal a wealth of Yuri Kochnev. Union. In the West, however, where musical tastes lyrical invention. His symphonies embrace an ever- favoured the avant garde, his music was largely expanding quest for innovation within traditional forms. Edward Serov overlooked. That climate of opinion has been rapidly To briefly summarise, in the First Symphony (1947) changing. As more of his work is recorded on CD, Boris matters of thematic organization receive individual Edward Serov, People’s Artist of Russia, is one of the leading Russian orchestral conductors of the modern era. He Tchaikovsky is becoming widely recognised as one of the treatment; the Second Symphony (1967) incorporates was born in 1937 in Moscow. At the age of six, he began taking violin and piano lessons. He graduated from the most important Russian composers of our time. musical quotations from the classics as points of structural Moscow Conservatory in 1958. Three years later he completed his studies at the Kiev Conservatory and continued As both standard-bearer and innovator, Tchaikovsky departure; the Third Symphony, “Sebastopol”, (1980) is his conducting and composition studies in Leningrad (St Petersburg), where he immediately became assistant to the arguably did more to enrich the tradition of Russian conceived as a single monumental movement; and his great Evgeny Mravinsky in the conducting class of the Conservatory and with the famous Leningrad Philharmonic instrumental music than anyone else of his generation. He Symphony with Harp (1993) explores a unique set of Orchestra (where he conducted during 1962-1968, and later during 1985-1990). Prize-Winner of the First Herbert was trained at the Moscow Conservatory during the 1940s timbral possibilities. von Karajan Conducting Competition, founder of two major symphony orchestras in Russia, the Volgograd under Vissarion Shebalin, Shostakovich, and Nikolay The present disc draws upon Tchaikovsky’s earliest Philharmonic and Ulyanovsk Philharmonic, for many years Chief Conductor of the St Petersburg Chamber Myaskovsky. His works from the 1950s, such as the period with three works written between 1947 and 1953, Orchestra (1974-1985), as well as the Odense Symphony Orchestra (1991-1996), and Saratov Philharmonic celebrated Sinfonietta for Strings (1953), show that he was around the time of his graduation from the Moscow Orchestra (1995-2003), he is a musician of the highest achievement. He has recorded some fifty LPs and thirty CDs a traditionalist with forward-looking sensibilities. An Conservatory in 1949. The earliest of these is the First for various Western and Russian labels, and has more than a thousand orchestral works in his repertoire. Edward extensive revamping of his style in the 1960s, coincident Symphony, whose originality so impressed Shostakovich Serov has conducted in most European countries, in the United States, Canada, and Japan. He has been the artistic with the freer creative environment then emerging in the that he brought the work to the attention of the noted director of musical festivals taking place in Volgograd. In 2006 he was awarded the Order for Services to the Soviet Union, led his music in fresh directions. Unlike the conductor Evgeny Mravinsky, who readily agreed to Homeland, Russia’s highest honour. He collaborated for many years with Boris Tchaikovsky, entrusted with the alienating rhetoric and the host of “isms” adopted by many programme it, but what should have been an auspicious premières of his Six Etudes for Strings and Organ, Signs of the Zodiac, and Four Preludes for Chamber Orchestra. of his contemporaries, Tchaikovsky’s mature style première by a promising young composer never maintained strong connections with its Russian roots. materialised. Stalin’s notorious campaign against Soviet Kirill Ershov With its brittle lyricism, pronounced rhythmic features, composers in 1948 brought virtually all musical creativity and an expanded harmonic palette that never completely to a halt. Specifically targeted was Shostakovich, whose Kirill Ershov is a conductor of the new generation. He was born in 1970 and after graduating from the Gnesin abandons tonality, the new style allowed him to take on a students, including Tchaikovsky, were branded as Musical College in Moscow, completed studies in 1994 at the Saratov Conservatory in the classes of balalaika and broad and at times exotic array of formal challenges. The “contaminated”. The first performance of the Symphony, conducting. In 1992 he became laureate of Russian Competition for folk-instrument performers. During 1999-2001 result was a highly innovative, richly expressive body of as happened with a number of contemporaneous works by he took a post-graduate conducting course at the Saratov Conservatory.