• Two years — nine releases
• Online competition: Friday 27 May
• Lucia di Lammermoor — our next release

Today, on 25 May, the Mariinsky Label, own record label of the Mariinsky Theatre, turns 2 years.

During its short but vivid and eventful history, the label has produced nine releases and achieved enormous popularity in Russia and abroad. Recordings were marked by the editor’s choice of the world’s leading music magazines. Launched by Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre in 2009, the label provided an opportunity for everyone to get acquainted with best music works performed by the Mariinsky Theatre artists under Valery Gergiev. Discs are recorded at the Mariinsky Concert Hall, which is equipped with a modern equipment in order to produce discs in SACD format.

The first release of the label, which was released on 25 May 2009, was a disc with the opera The Nose by Shostakovich, which received a “5 star” mark by British newspapers. French magazine Classica marked this release with the “Editor’s Choice”, the British BBC Music Magazine named it the “Best Disc of the Month”, The Washington Post newspaper included it to the ten best recordings of the year, and in January 2010, the disc has been awarded one of the most prestigious awards in the area of recording — MIDEM Classical Awards. The Nose and the second release with a recording of Symphonies Nos. 1 and 15 by Shostakovich were put forward in a record five nominations for Grammy-2010, one of the most prestigious awards in the modern music industry. A release with works by Rodion Shchedrin — the opera The Enchanted Wanderer, fragments of the ballet The Little Humpbacked Horse and his Concerto for Orchestra No. 1 (“Naughty limericks”) was submitted for Grammy-2011 in two categories -“The Best Opera” and “The Best Classical Music Work by a Contemporary Composer”, and James Mallinson, the producer of The Enchanted Wanderer and of the subsequent label release of the opera Parsifal by Richard Wagner, was nominated for a Grammy Award-2011 as “The Best Sound Engineer of Classical Music Release.” Recording of Parsifal featuring René Pape in the part of Gurnemanz was named “CD of the Month” in September 2010 according to BBC Music Magazine and “Editor’s Choice” in the October issue of the British music magazine The Gramophone. In continuation of a project aimed at recording of all fifteen symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich, in December 2010 and March 2011 Mariinsky Label released Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, 10 and 11 by one of the greatest classics of the 20th century.

Online competition.

To celebrate the Mariinsky Label birthday, we are running an online quiz for all classical music lovers on the social media of our theater.

On Friday 27 May, at each hour starting from 10:00AM until 6:00PM, on the official pages of the Mariinsky Theatre in social networks VKontakte, Facebook and twitter we shall publish questions related to the Mariinsky Label releases, which are already produced to date. We’ll publish nine questions. Winners will be recognized by those who will first give the correct answer to any of the questions. The prize will be one Mariinsky Label release, which will be related to the question. Thus, all nine releases will be in the competition. According to the competition rules, in the event that someone will provide the correct answer first to more than one question, they get only the first disc from a series of those questions that they would give correct answers to, and other CDs will be awarded to the participants who will be next in the timeline with correct answers. We invite all Internet users who are interested in classical music to take part in our competition on Friday.

Answers to quiz questions should be sent in real time (you have to be quick!) by any of the following ways:

• Post a comment to a question placed on the wall of the official Mariinsky Facebook page (in Russian);
• Send a response tweet to our tweet with a question posted on the official Mariinsky twitter-account in English;
• Post a comment to a question placed on the wall of the official Mariinsky VKontakte page (in Russian);
• Send a response tweet to our tweet with a question posted on the official Mariinsky twitter-account in Russian.

10:00AM, 11:00AM, 12:00noon, 1:00PM, 2:00PM, 3:00PM, 4:00PM, 5:00PM, 6:00PM.

You are welcome to join us then. Best of luck!

August 2011 should see our next release on the Mariinsky Label: a full-length recording of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor featuring soprano Natalie Dessay in the title part and one of the world leading lyric tenors Piotr Beczała as Edgar. The recording was made in September 2010 at the Mariinsky Concert Hall.

# 10: Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor
Will be released in August 2011