Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture
Composer: Tchaikovsky
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Orchestra: Orchestra and Chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre
Format: SACD
Price: £9.99
Release Date: 19 October 2009
Mariinsky label recordings are made available by LSO Live. To complete your order you will be transferred to the London Symphony Orchestra website.
Unlike the majority of his Russian predecessors, Tchaikovsky’s fame meant he received regular commissions for new work – he was the first ‘professional’ Russian composer. A new generation followed in his footsteps including Stravinsky and Prokofiev; for them, commissions were the norm.
Many of the works for which Tchaikovsky was commissioned were required to celebrate great state and political events. The Danish Overture was written to mark the marriage of the future Tsar Alexander III to the Danish Princess Dagmar. He was later commissioned to to produce the rarely heard Moscow Cantata and Coronation March as part of the celebrations to mark Alexander’s coronation.
Includes:
1812 Overture
Moscow Cantata
Marche Slave
Coronation March
Danish Overture
Reviews
1 December 2009
‘Tchaikovsky is most evidently (and gloriously) Tchaikovsky in the Moscow Cantata. A vintage melody turns the first page of Russian history, illuminating it in that inimitable Tchaikovsky way. The baritone monologue in praise of Moscow culminates in a marvellously stirring idea and in the second mezzo-soprano arioso honouring the women of Russian we find a heroine worthy of any Tchaikovsky opera. No doubt about it, Tchaikovsky had a gift for personalising even his most official duties, The dutiful was not really in his vocabulary.’
Artists
Valery Gergiev, conductor
Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre
Lyubov Sokolova mezzo-soprano
Alexey Markov baritone
