For much of its history Russia was sufficiently
removed from the musical mainstream
of central and Western Europe to
maintain a distinct tradition in its own music.
During the 18th-century Enlightenment,however,
the Court of Catherine the Great became
assiduous about cultivating its ties to the West.In
the 1700s and 1800s, many of Russia’s leading
musical figures were actually expatriates —
sometimes temporary, sometimes long-term —
from Italy,France,or Germany.By the early 19th
century,a homegrown talent pool had emerged,
and Russian composers began to develop concert
traditions that could rival those of Western
Europe even while displaying a distinct aesthetic.
Music became a national passion. Ever since
Mikhail Glinka established an independent classical-music
tradition in the 1830s,Russians have
smothered their composers and musicians with
Czarist medallions, Lenin Prizes, Stalin Awards,
Artist of the People Commendations, and the
like. Music matters deeply to the Russians,and
such cultural shrines as Tchaikovsky’s home in
Klin or the Great Concert Hall of the Moscow
Conservatory are approached in a reverential
spirit.
The list of Russian musical giants is long and
their music could fill an entire concert season
without any trouble.For this visit to the land of
the Russian giants, the New York Philharmonic
turns to masterful orchestral works by
four of Russia’s most enduringly popular classical
composers: Modest Musorgsky, the most
visionary of the 19th-century nationalist composers
known as the Russian Five; Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky, the Russian Romantic par excellence,
renowned for his ballets as well as for his
symphonic music; Sergei Rachmaninoff, who