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ID: MELCD1002460
CDs: 6
Type: CD
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Collection: Great Performers
Subcollection: Violin and Orchestra
For the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yehudi Menuhim, one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, Firma Melodiya presents a set of historic recordings of his concerts in Moscow in 1945 and 1962. Yehudi Menuhim had a special place in store for him in the constellation of brilliant violinists of the previous century. He gave his first concert when he was seven years old, debuted with an orchestra at ten, and became famous across the world after his triumphant debut in Berlin at thirteen. Despite the hand illness he went through at the height of his performing career, Menuhin continued to perform as actively until the late 1980s. “As the years go by, his art is getting warmer and more humane…” wrote Lev Raaben. A son of Russian emigrant parents, Yehudi Menuhin visited this country several times. His first tour in November 1945 was an important event. It was the first time when a musician from the allied state came to the USSR. His chamber concerts were accompanied by the pianist Lev Oborin and the concertmaster Abram Makarov. He alternated large scale pieces with miniatures. Although technically imperfect, the phonograms of Menuhin’s Moscow concerts of 1945 and 1962 are still priceless phonographic documents of the era. Some of these featured recordings have not been previously released. |
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ID: MELCD1002170
CDs: 6
Type: CD
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Collection: Symphony
Subcollection: Orchestra
Box set
R. Vaughan Williams - Symphonies No.1, No.2, No.3, No.5, No.6, No.8 and No.9
Melodiya presents a complete set of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s symphonies conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.Vaughan Williams was one of the largest figures of the English Musical Renaissance, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A composer, conductor, organist, folklore student and publicist, Vaughan Williams today is mostly known for his large-scale symphonic works. The English composer’s nine symphonies sequentially reflect the evolution of his creative style (the first one was composed in 1903, and the last one not long before he died in 1958). Each of them seems to be a continuation, a development of the previous one (a sort of “chapters of one novel”), but neither repeats any other one in structure, composition, concept or music. Some of the symphonies are closely connected with national poetry (Walt Whitman), episodes from the English history or pictures of native countryside.Absorbing a wide range of sources realized in Vaughan Williams’s style - from old folk songs and religious hymns to musical impressionism and jazz - his symphonies are notable for expressive figurativeness and melodic resourcefulness, and open to any keen ear.The recordings of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies performed by the prominent conductor and recognized master of interpretation of 20th century music were made at concerts in 1988-1989 in Leningrad. |
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ID: MELCD1002320
CDs: 6
Type: CD
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Collection: Orchestral Works
Subcollection: Orchestra
Firma Melodiya presents a boxed set dedicated to the 75th anniversary of one of the outstanding contemporary Russian conductors, Dmitri Kitayenko.
“Today he can be undoubtedly considered one of the five or six best conductors of the world. This phenomenon is out of the ordinary”, Herbert von Karajan wrote about Kitayenko after the young Soviet conductor gave a brilliant performance at the international competition in Vienna, receiving the second prize and winning the hearts of the Viennese audience and media. Evgeny Svetlanov also greeted his younger colleague on the pages of the Soviet press as a talented and promising conductor.
A graduate of the Leningrad Conservatory who also completed a postgraduate course at the Moscow Conservatory and a training course at the Vienna Academy of Music, Dmitri Kitayenko had a brilliant start to his conducting career. From 1976 to 1990 he headed the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic Society. Under his leadership the celebrated orchestra substantially expanded its repertoire and actively toured.
During recent decades, the conductor worked with the orchestras of Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and the United States and regularly recorded.
This 6 CD set includes recordings made by Dmitri Kitayenko in the studio and in the concert hall between 1975 and 1987 with the orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic Society and the USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra. The repertoire included showcases the conductor’s stylistic diversity and highest mastery.
These recordings will be of interest to those who remembers Kitayenko’s performances of the past years and to a new generation of listeners as well.
Brahms -Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. 45
Corelli -Suite for Strings
Donizetti - Miserere
Grieg - Holberg Suite, Op. 40
Prokofiev - Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25 'Classical'
Puccini - Messa di Gloria
Rachmaninov - The Bells, Op. 35
Respighi - Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 3, P. 172
Shostakovich - Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93
R. Strauss - Tanzsuite aus Klavierstücken von François Couperin
Tchaikovsky - Concert Fantasy, Op. 56
Choir of the Latvian Philharmonic Society, The State Republican A Yurlov Russian Choir, Latvian SSR State Academic Choir, Choir of the USSR Bolshoi Theatre, Dmitri Kitayenko |
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ID: MELCD1002361
CDs: 6
Type: CD
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Collection: Russian Romance
Subcollection: Voices
Recorded in 1962, 1963, 1967, 1969,
1971, 1972, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1983,
1986, 1990.
Firma Melodiya presents a complete collection of romances and songs by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky timed to the great Russian composer’s 175th anniversary.
“As a matter of fact, poetry and music are so close to each other,” Tchaikovsky wrote to Nadezhda von Meck. Chamber vocal music has a very special place
in the extensive legacy of the composer who was a symphonist of genius, a creator of operatic and ballet masterpieces, and a prominent master of the concerto genre. It accompanied Tchaikovsky throughout his artistic life being his “lyrical diary” and at the same time an creative laboratory where he sought for and found images for his very different works. The 17-year-old student of the Imperial School of Jurisprudence started off his composing career with
timid attempts to set poetic texts to music. In the romances of Op. 6, the composer appears as a mature master, while the numerous vocal pieces of the 1870s anticipate the artistic imagery and musical drama of Eugene Onegin. Op. 73, the composer’s last chamber vocal work, which immediately preceded the writing of the Sixth Symphony (Pathétique), is surprisingly similar to the symphony in terms of images and emotions. The set features all of the composer’s 103 romances for voice and piano, including rare cycles such as 16
Songs for Children, Op. 54, and 6 romances after French poets, Op. 65. The recordings were made on Firma Melodiya in the 1960s to 1980s as part of
a grandiose project of complete recorded collection of Tchaikovsky’s works. It involved the talents of the best Soviet vocalists such as Zara Dolukhanova, Irina
Arkhipova, Elena Obraztsova, Tamara Milashkina, Sergei Lemeshev, Ivan Petrov, Yuri Mazurok, Muslim Magomaev and other singers/soloists of the USSR Bolshoi Theatre and All-Union Radio. |
| 65.00 eur Temporarily out of stock |
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ID: MELCD1002475
CDs: 7
Type: CD
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Collection: Orchestral Works
Subcollection: Orchestra
Melodiya presents a set of selected symphonies by Gustav Mahler interpreted by Kirill Kondrashin and Alexander Sladkovsky. Almost fifty years separate the recording of these interpretations. The name of Kirill Kondrashin is linked with the everlasting glory of the “Moscow philharmonics” - the orchestra that became one of the best collectives of the former Soviet Union under his leadership. Kondrashin not only resumed the tradition of “Russian Mahleriana” that had been interrupted by the Soviet ideologists of music for three decades - he actually rediscovered the world of Mahler’s music for the domestic audience.
People’s Artist of Russia Alexander Sladkovsky is among the best known conductors of modern Russia. He was the one who resuscitated the State Symphony Orchestra of the Republic of Tatarstan (former Tatar ASSR) and won the recognition in this country and overseas during his six-year leadership. Just as Kondrashin did, Sladkovsky possesses an extensive repertoire, devotes much attention to contemporary music and achieves the highest technique and combination of emotional uplift with academic strictness in his interpretations. Mahler and Shostakovich take a special place in the modern maestro’s music pantheon. While Mahler’s First, Fifth and Ninth symphonies recorded by Sladkovsky and his orchestra in 2016 preserve the traits of Kondrashin’s tradition, they also capture the conductor’s distinction as his art is addressed to today’s listeners. |
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ID: MELCD1001951
CDs: 8
Type: CD
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Collection: Ballet Music
Subcollection: Orchestra
The repertoire of any ballet company always has three performances penned by the same author - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. These are Swan Lake (1877), The Sleeping Beauty (1889) and The Nutcracker (1892). If now these works are not only known to the whole world but have become a tradition, in Tchaikovsky’s time they opened a new era of the Russian ballet. Tchaikovsky was one of the first Russian composers who turned to the genre of ballet adding a self-reliant artistic value to the music. The Firma Melodiya programme titled “P.I. Tchaikovsky - Ballets” features the music by the greatest Russian composer performed by the USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra lead by the prominent conductor of modern time Evgeny Svetlanov. The wealth of Tchaikovsky’s scores performed by the celebrated orchestra allows the listeners to get immersed in the magical world of the characters of Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, literally visualizing it.
CD 1 53:35
CD 2 47:33
CD 3 52:38
CD 4 71:25
CD 5 48:08
CD 6 50:10
CD 7 48:17
CD 8 43:15
8 CD’s: Total time: 363.01 |
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ID: MELCD1002431
CDs: 10
Type: CD
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Collection: Symphony
Subcollection: Voices and Orchestra
Dmitri Shostakovich’s creations constitute a musical chronicle of the epoch. What we hear in his music is something that continues to alarm minds and souls of millions of people. His fifteen symphonies captured not only the great musician’s evolution - as if the entire 20th century with its great discoveries and perturbations, unprecedented progress and terrifying catastrophes breathes in their scores. These are unique documents of human spirit that will stay with us for good to tell us about their time, to stir heated theoretical and aesthetic disputes, to give us a reason for very different interpretations, and to command our admiration or sharp rejection. Whatever the case may be, they will never find an indifferent listener.
Firma Melodiya is preparing a number of large-scale projects for the Shostakovich anniversary year. We present the first of them - a set of the composer’s symphonies performed by the greatest masters of the Soviet conducting school and brightest interpreters of Shostakovich’s music - Evgeny Mravinsky, Kirill Kondrashin, Evgeny Svetlanov and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. The set also includes recordings made by Konstantin Ivanov, a predecessor of Evgeny Svetlanov as chief conductor of the country’s principal orchestra - the USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra; Yuri Temirkanov, a successor of Evgeny Mravinsky, a great representative of the St. Petersburg conducting school; Rudolf Barshai, a founder of the first Soviet chamber orchestra and the one who inspired Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony; and Maxim Shostakovich, the composer’s son who presented the world premiere of the last, Fifteenth Symphony.
The live and studio recordings of Shostakovich’s symphonies were made by Firma Melodiya from 1961 to 1984. The studio recording is peculiar for the fact it was realized shortly after the world premiere in the presence and under supervision of the composer. An unconfirmed legend among the former members of the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra has it that the recording was to be erased together with the other ones after Maxim Shostakovich defected from the Soviet Union. However, it survived among the Melodiya phonograms.
The edition comprises a lidded hard box made from lined cardboard, 9 digipacks and a thick hardcover booklet in English and Russian.
CD 1 - Symphonies Nos. 1-3
CD 2 - Symphony No. 4
CD 3 - Symphonies Nos. 5 - 6
CD 4 - Symphony No. 7
CD 5 - Symphony No. 8
CD 6 - Symphonies Nos. 9 - 10
CD 7, CD 8 - Symphonies Nos. 11 - 13
CD 9 - Symphony No. 14
CD 10 - Symphony No. 15 |
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ID: MELCD1002270
CDs: 50
Type: CD
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Collection: Piano Concerto
Subcollection: Piano
For the 100th anniversary of Sviatoslav Richter, Firma Melodiya presents its
arguably biggest project in its semicentennial history.
The name of Sviatoslav Richter is inscribed in gold in the history of music.
He was not just “more than a pianist,” he was even more than a musician. An owner
of composing, conducting, artistic, directing and acting gifts, a connoisseur of literature,
arts and philosophy, with a will of iron he made all his gifts serve the art of
pianism. An “artist of planetary scale,” as of the critics put it, Richter was like that in
everything - in his unbounded repertoire that he never stopped replenishing until
his last years, in his priestly frenzy of hours-long rehearsals, in the geography and
number of performances, - over 3 500 concerts in 770 places of the world for 55
years of his musical career! (“He was somewhat fathomless, Richter,” said one of his
famous colleagues). However, after he conquered the world (almost literally), he remained
indifferent to ovation and eulogies of the press, painfully experienced each
of the “defects” he noticed in his performance, and at the end of his way confessed
before the journalist Bruno Monsaingeon: “I don’t like myself.”
Of course we inherited numerous recordings from Sviatoslav Richter, live
and studio ones (although he preferred the former to the latter). Hundreds of records
and CDs have been released on domestic and foreign labels (the first of them,
gramophone ones, appeared in the 1940’s while some others became available as
late as in this century). However, even the existing body of recordings captures
neither his complete repertoire nor the entire essence of Richter’s
pieces could sound differently over the years, or even over a day!
And now, Firma Melodiya that recently marked its 50th birthday makes a
unique present for both sophisticated experts and a broad circle of music lovers -
a 50-CD set of Sviatoslav Richter’s concert recordings!
It has to be understood that this collection is far from the complete phonographic
legacy of the great musician. Nevertheless, the set includes plenty of
exclusive, previously unreleased recordings that will make the hearts of even
most erudite connoisseurs and collectors rejoice.
Most of the featured recordings are broadcasts from the concerts played in
Moscow in 1962 to 1983. However, the exceptions are of special interest. These are:
• one of the first Sviatoslav Richter’s extant concert programmes -
Schubert’s last sonata and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1949);
• recording of the concert with Nina Dorliak in Bucharest, in 1958;
• recordings of “home” rehearsals with Nina Dorliak.
Alexander Scriabin’s Prometheus, on which he plays a “modest” piano
part in an orchestra, is evidence of Richter’s extremely broad musical interests, or
the recordings of J.S. Bach’s ensemble concertos together with students of the
Moscow Conservatory.
Perhaps the listeners will find a number of “repetitive” tracks surprising.
Richter played (and recorded) many works time and again. Some of them allow us
to track the evolution of the pianist’s art, testify to his constant creative search
and dissatisfaction with himself (the interpretations of Berg’s concertos with different
performers, different versions of Schubert’s Sonata No. 6, Beethoven’s Third
Concerto and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition at an interval of ten and twenty
years, respectively). Some other recordings were played in a shorter stretch of
time (Beethoven’s Sonata No. 1, Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 2), or in succession - from
the mid 1970’s. Considering the growing interest of the public, Richter frequently,
fully or partly, repeated his programmes. So, at an interval of one day he played
Mozart’s Concerto No. 18 and Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-tableaux. In those unique
phonographic documents, a keen ear will detect barely perceptible “atmospheric”
changes that captured an inner aura of a certain concert as each of them was a new
test for the pianist in terms uncompromising strictness to himself, a new step on
the way to Absolute Music.
Berg:
Chamber Concerto for Piano and Violin with 13 Wind Instruments
Brahms:
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83
Rhapsody in G minor, Op. 79 No. 2
Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100
Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108
Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78
Britten:
Piano Concerto, Op. 13
Debussy:
Préludes - Book 2 (12, complete)
Cloches à travers les feuilles (No. 1 from Images pour piano - Book 2)
Dvorak:
Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33
Franck, C:
Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 14
Violin Sonata in A major
Liszt:
Erlkönig (No. 4 from Zwölf Lieder von Franz Schubert, S558)
Concerto pathétique for Piano and Orchestra, S365a
Mendelssohn:
Variations sérieuses in D minor Op. 54
Mozart:
Piano Concerto No. 22 in E flat major, K482
Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K595
Mussorgsky:
Pictures at an Exhibition (piano version)
Prokofiev:
Piano Sonata No. 2 in D minor, Op. 14
Piano Sonata No. 4 in C minor, Op. 29
Piano Sonata No. 6 in A major, Op. 82
Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80
Piano Concerto No. 5 in G major, Op. 55
Ravel:
Valses nobles et sentimentales
Piano Trio in A minor
Schubert:
Piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat major, D960
Piano Sonata No. 6 in E minor, D566
Piano Sonata No. 13 in A major, D664
Piano Sonata No. 11 in F minor, D625
Klavierstücke (3), D946
Schumann:
Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Op. 26
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Scriabin:
Piano Sonata No. 7, Op. 64 'White Mass'
Prometheus (The Poem of Fire), Op. 60
Shostakovich:
Violin Sonata, Op. 134
Viola Sonata, Op. 147
Wagner:
Elegy in A flat |
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