samedi 17 mai 2008

Moscow Philharmony broadcasted tours

To many extends Kondrashin's career remains today full of mysteries. Among others it is extremely difficult to restore his schedule with the Moscow Philharmony, an orchestra that, according to Evgeny Svetlanov, "owes everything to Kirill Kondrashin" (and, if Svetlanov said it, he really meant it, since he was particularly sparing of compliments on his colleagues). Even granted the fact that Kondrashin resigned in 1975 from his position as chief musical director of the Moscow Philharmony (after having tried in vain to obtain a substancial salarial augmentation for his musicians to prevent them from seeking other better paid engagements) and that he defected to the West in 1978, it is very hard to believe that so few Radio Archives were broadcasted and released.
If you read the new Moscow Philharmony's internet page, you will discover that Kondrashin federated the Orchestra around a huge and impressive number of symphonic integrals. Under his baton (actually he conducted only with his hands) they performed the complete symphonies by Brahms, Tchaïkovsky, Rachmaninov, Mahler and Shostakovich, but also those by Bruckner (I had always thought that Kondrashin never experienced this composer, which was the favourite one of his Leningrad rival Evgeny Mravinsky), as well as the complete symphonic works by Beethoven, which they performed and toured all along Russian throughout the whole year 1970, on occasion of the 200th birthday of the composer (actually, this was such a taxing and exhausting tour that Kondrashin had a very bad heart attack in early 1971, that left him unable to conduct for a few months, so that everybody thought he would never conduct again).
It is very unlikely that no broadcasting were made of such artistic events: there must be some Radio archives of those complete symphonic series somewhere in Moscow, and maybe some people could copy some of them.
I leave you these reflections: maybe you have heard of some unpublished broadcasted recording. They would be of first importance for the knowledge of Kondrashin's conducting art, granted that his interpretations of Beethoven were very advanced for their time, and that his conception of Tchaïkovsky was accurate enough for publishing a whole book on the topic; moreover, we are left without any recording of any symphony by Rachmaninov (despite the mention of a Concertgebouw broadcasting released by "O O O Classics", which proves absolutely impossible to find), and we only have his Brahms integrale with the Large Radio and TV USSR Symphony Orchestra (which is extremely fine).
So, if you know something, let us know, please.

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