In 1961 the then twenty-nine-year-old Yevgeny Yevtushenko published a poem entitled Babi Yar in the Literaturnaya gazeta. Babi Yar was the name of a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev which in 1941 had been the scene of a mass execution where, within the space of thirty-six hours, some 34.000 Jewish men, women and children were shot by a special unit of the German SS. In his poem Yevtushenko used the National Socialists‘ act of genocide as the starting-point of an attack on anti-Semitism in general, which he pilloried as a timeless evil that was widespread throughout the world, but which, he implied, was especially rife in Russia. Few Russian composers of the past were above reproach as far as anti-Semitism was concerned. Of these, the two that spring most immediately to mind are Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich.

This album is dedicated to two masterpieces of Russian film music. It is also a reminiscence to Saulius Sondeckis, one of the figureheads of the former Soviet Union chamber music scene, who died last year, and to Georgy Sviridov, whose 20th anniversary of death is around the corner next year.

This album presents four magnificent orchestral works by Mikahil Glinka, allowing an insight into his workshop at an early stage of his creative development. It reflects the encounter of Russian music tradition by form and genre – songs and dances – with the Italian art of singing – the belcanto – which Glinka became acquainted with during his years of travel. As of 1830 he spent three years in Italy to enhance his knowledge of the Italian opera. In this time he met in Milan Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti, getting familiar with the art of belcanto, which he later combined with the Russian vocal tradition thus creating the personal Glinka style.

Tchaikovsky’s three quartets were written during one fiveyear period, a time of rapid growth and maturing of his talent and creativity. Just as he pointed in one of his newspaper reviews to the love and attention which Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had lavished on this “modest form of music, which, in the narrow confines of four bowed instruments, provides for the richest development of musical ideas,” Tchaikovsky’s own approach to chamber music was similarly serious and profound. His quartets combine the exquisite, refined sonorities of an ensemble with truly symphonic development and an amazingly warm and accessible musical language.