GENNADI ROZHDESTVENSKY

Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4

BBCSO / Gennadi Rozhdestvensky

LEEDS MUSIC FESTIVAL, LEEDS TOWN HALL, LEEDS, 1 JUNE 1979

Mussorgsky

A Night on the Bare Mountain (Sorochinsky Fair version)

David Wilson-Johnson (bass-baritone)

BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus

BBCSO / Gennadi Rozhdestvensky

ROYAL ALBERT HALL, LONDON, 27 JULY 1981

Prokofiev

The Love for Three Oranges Suite

BBCSO / Gennadi Rozhdestvensky

FAR EAST TOUR, KURASHIKI CITY AUDITORIUM,

KURASHIKI, JAPAN, 31 MAY 1981

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (b. 1931) is the last living survivor of a great Russian quartet of conductors consisting of Mravinsky, Kondrashin and Svetlanov. He was the highly distinguished principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1978 to 1981, an exciting period in the orchestra’s history, faithfully captured here.

The Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev recordings have never been issued before on CD, while the Mussorgsky was released on the now defunct BBC Radio Classics series over 15 years ago.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4 from the 1979 Leeds Music Festival is one of the conductor’s most inspired performances, rivalling Mravinsky in his celebrated accounts. Rozhdestvensky treats it as a broad tragedy of the highest order without sentimentalising it.

Rozhdestvensky’s championship of Mussorgsky produces a rarity – the version of A Night on a Bare Mountain used in the composer’s Sorochinsky Fair, which includes a chorus and a bass-baritone (David Wilson-Jones). This version, from the 1981 BBC Proms, is sung in English. Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges Suite was given on a Far East tour in Kurashiki, Japan in 1981 and benefits from Rozhdestvensky’s long experience with ballet and, in this performance, his fiery impetus.

ICAClassics ICAC5035