Imagine a great Russian orchestra performing masterpieces of the Russian repertoire under the baton of a renowned Russian conductor. It could not be better for concert-goers.
On May 30, the Moscow Radio Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra will give a concert at the Great Hall of the People to end the month-long Meet In Beijing Festival 2004.
The conductor is the famous Vladimir Fedoseyev. And the program includes Tchaikovsky's hauntingly beautiful and deeply melancholy Symphony No 4, his music for the ballet Sleeping Beauty and the popular 1812 Overture.
The winner of the Glinka Prize, Fedoseyev was born in St Petersburg, educated at the Gnessin Musical Academy in Moscow and completed the graduate course in conducting of professor Leo Ginzburg at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1968.
In 1974, when he was invited to take the position of artistic director and principal conductor of the Moscow Radio Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, which was founded in 1930, Fedoseyev already had extensive experience working with famous orchestras, including the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bolshoi Orchestra and the Kirov Theatre Orchestra.
But it was with Moscow Radio Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra that Fedoseyev revealed the true extent of his tremendous talent as a principal conductor.
Fedoseyev is a thoughtful, serious musician. He has an uncanny sensitivity in his interpretation of composer's conceptions. The foreign press always emphasizes the orchestra's wide and non-traditional Russian repertory.
However, the orchestra, under Fedoseyev's baton, has won special recognition for its performance and recordings of Russian music: notably the works of Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Sviridov.
During his almost 30 years with the orchestra, he has formed a very special relationship with the musicians and given the orchestra a very distinctive stamp. Besides his work with the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, Fedoseyev also collaborates with a number of famous European orchestras and with the best opera theatres of Europe: La Scala, and the opera theatres of Rome, Florence and Bologna, and the Vienna State Opera.
(China Daily May 29, 2004)