The St Petersburg Radio and TV Children’s Chorus

The Children’s Chorus of St Petersburg TV and Radio is one of the most respected children’s concert ensembles in the city, having strong musical traditions and a rich and vivid history. This year marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of the chorus’ foundation.

In 1955 at Radio Leningrad a special children’s choral ensemble was established, its task being to provide a musical backdrop for broadcasts. Each week the chorus recorded music for television programmes and radio productions, also appearing on the concert stage. Its founder and Artistic Director for thirty-three years was the famed conductor and producer of choral transcriptions Yuri Mikhailovich Slavnitsky (1925–2000). Yuri Slavnitsky was replaced as the chorus’ director by Stanislav Gribkov, followed in 2013 by the latter’s son Igor Gribkov.

Today the ensemble appears on the concert platform, in operas and in productions of dramas as well as at official ceremonies. At the Mariinsky Theatre the chorus participates in such productions as The Queen of Spades, Carmen, Brundibár, The Nutcracker and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Its repertoire encompasses works from the most diverse musical styles and eras: from Russian Orthodox Church music and Western European classics to rock and pop compositions. Recent events of great significance in the chorus’ concert biography include participating in performances of Britten’s War Requiem, Mahler’s Third and Eighth Symphonies, Orff’s cantata Carmina Burana and Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man, A Mass for Peace among other works.

Principal Chorus Master and Director: Igor Gribkov
Information for January 2020