On 28 and 29 May mariinsky.tv will be broadcasting music by Russian composers. On 28 May the broadcast will be of a performance by the Mariinsky Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev of Dmitry Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony and Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto in which Denis Matsuev will be the soloist. 29 May will see the first online screening of a recording of Shostakovich's operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki in concert. The start of the online broadcasts is at 19.00 Moscow Time on mariinsky.tv and via the social networking sites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.
Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto, dedicated to the memory of the great pianist and founder of the Moscow Conservatory Nikolai Rubinstein, is considered to be less successful than the First, although it does present immense possibilities for performers to display their virtuoso skills. At the Mariinsky Theatre this compelling opus is often performed by Denis Matsuev. As part of this online screening we will be presented with the pianist appearing with the Mariinsky Orchestra in 2015. The second work in the programme of the broadcast on 28 May belongs to another age of Russian classical music. The Fifth Symphony was written by Shostakovich in 1937, at the height of Stalinist repressions and following the composer's denouncement by the Soviet press which noted the commencement of a struggle with "formalism". Dmitry Shostakovich said that in this symphony he wished to show "how optimism asserts itself as a world outlook through a series of tragic conflicts in a great inner and mental struggle."
Composed twenty years later, Shostakovich's "Thaw" operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki is entirely different in terms of mood. Here the composer returned to a once-abandoned genre and created one of his brightest works. This operetta about young citizens moving from communal flats to new Khrushchev-era apartments, involving humorous, touching and – at times – semi-criminal actions, was to emerge as a production-divertissement. "Here there is lyricism, there is a 'cascade', there are differing intermedias, there are dances and there is even an entire brief ballet scene. In musical terms, at times there are elements of parody, the citation of motifs popular in the recent past and also from several songs by Soviet lyricists," the composer commented. The libretto by Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinsky coupled with the light, enchantingly cheerful music filled with humour ensured the success of the opus on the stage, and in 1962 it was made into a film of the same name. The recording from 2015 presents the operetta in a concert performance. The lead roles are sung by soloists of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers directed by Larisa Gergieva: Denis Begansky (Bubentsov), Anna Barkhatova (Masha), Roman Lyulkin (Baburov), Margarita Ivanova (Lidochka), Yaroslav Petryanik (Boris Koretsky) and Dmitry Koleushko (Sergei Glushkov) among others. The conductor is Pavel Petrenko.
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