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“Music from the Court of Catherine the Great”
When one hears the term ‘Russian Music,’ the great Romantic music of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninoff tends to come to mind. However, it is little known that the second half of the 18th century was also a ‘golden age’ of Russian music, fostered by Catherine the Great (reigned 1762 – 1796). St. Petersburg, Russia’s capital, became under Catherine’s reign one of the great musical cities in all of Europe. Catherine lured to her court many of Europe’s greatest composers to serve as Music Director (or Maestro di Cappella), such as Galuppi, Cimarosa, Martin y Soler, and Raupach. These composers were engaged to write works for the Imperial Court Chapel and Theater (located in the building we now know as the Hermitage Museum) and also to train the crop of young, brilliant Russian musicians, whom Catherine’s scouts had selected from all over the Empire, from the Ukraine to Belarus.
In the past two years, Clarion has given three concerts featuring unpublished, unknown music from the court of Catherine the Great; the first was in May 2007 at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the second two performances were in July 2008 at Bard College and at the Aston Magna Festival. The program for these concerts included compositions by two of Catherine’s great Italian Maestri di Cappella, Sarti and Galuppi, as well as works by three of the most brilliant native Russian 18th-century composers, Fomin, Bortniansky and Berezovsky, who began to develop an individual and distinctively Russian voice. This wonderful yet unknown repertoire is a specialty of Clarion’s Music Director Steven Fox, and the program includes many first editions prepared by him from manuscripts found in archives across Russia and Europe.
Performers - Soloists of the Clarion Music Society:
Marc Molomot, tenor
Robert Mealy, violin
Daniel Elyar, viola
Myron Lutzke, cello
Ilya Poletaev, harpsichord
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