Kamerorkest Moscow Soloists . Joeri Basjmet

In 1992, the viola player Yuri Bashmet formed the chamber orchestra Moscow Soloists, together with a few young graduates from the Moscow conservatory of music. This is the first time this ensemble with its unique Russian sound is performing in deSingel. They are bringing a typically 'Russian' programme, starting with the Symphony for Strings by Georgy Sviridov (1915-1998). Sviridov, a composer who is not very well-known in Europe, was Shostakovich's favourite student at the Leningrad conservatory of music and became one of the most celebrated Soviet composers. His work radiates tenderness, poetry, and lyrical ecstasy. The intensely expressive work of Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) was much more widely known and appreciated the world over during his lifetime. He is generally considered the 'true' heir to Shostakovich. The dense and atonal texture of his Monologue for Viola and Strings is interrupted, in the finale, by a sudden tonal shift. After the interval, we inevitably arrive at the two great masters of twentieth-century Russian music, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), but this time with new arrangements: Alexander Tchaikovsky turned Shostakovich's Thirteenth String Quartet into a piece for viola and strings (1970), and Rudolf Barshai orchestrated piano pieces by Prokofiev from