Dedicated to the blessed memory!
Araxia Davtian began her musical education as a pianist. Upon graduation from music school she continued her education as a vocalist in the college of music and then in the Yerevan Conservatory where she studied with R. Gulabian. In 1979 she became a prize-winner at the Glinka Competition, and in 1984 she won First Prize at the International Viotti Competition in Italy.
Vladimir Yurigin-Klevke studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Heinrich Neuhaus and Jacov Zak and was a First Prize-winner at the 1969 National Piano Competition of Contemporary Soviet Music.
Limited 14CD set. When the 50-year-old Fritz Reiner was appointed conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1938, he was still relatively unfamiliar in his adopted American homeland. This pupil of Bartók at the Academy of Music in his native Budapest, former conductor of the Dresden Royal Opera, where he worked with Richard Strauss, and for the past 16 years music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra was still rarely mentioned in the national press and never in record reviews.
The Yekaterinburg Philharmonic Choir (artistic director and conductor Andrei Petrenko) presents Great Music of Small Forms, an album of works by Russian composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. These include works by Varlamov and Glinka as representatives of the St. Petersburg school, by Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Balakirev and Cui (The Mighty Handful), and by Arensky, Anton Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky. Whilst these composers were primarily known for their large-scale compositions, here they reveal themselves as consummate masters of the choral miniature, finding their inspiration in the masterpieces of Russian poetry, in folk songs and in salon romances. Listeners will here discover not only world-famous works by these composers but also original choral arrangements of their music that were made especially for this recording.
This major recording series, across which a host of renowned singers draw listeners, decade by decade, through a century of song, reaches its fourth volume. Each issue features a carefully planned, varied programme performed by household names, whilst the series overall creates a comprehensive survey of song through the entire nineteenth century – not only a joy for listeners, but also an invaluable teaching asset.
Elena Kelessidi is one of opera’s most touching and fiery artists and the most international Greek soprano of today. Here she makes her recital debut with this heartfelt programme of songs from a country whose language is natural to her.