RUSSIAN AND BULGARIAN SPIRITUAL MUSIC
A. Grechaninov:
The Creed 4.31
Litany of Fervent Supplication 5.11
D. Hristov:
О Praise Our God 4.25
Now Letiest Thou Depart 3.34
A. Strumsky:
Greater Doxology 10.20
P. Dinev
The Wise Thief 2.11
P. Chesnokov:
From My Youth 3.23
The Mystical Sacrifice 4.25
The Legend of 12 Robbers, 4.47
folk song arranged by S. Zharov (N. Nekrasov)
Evgeny Nesterenko, bass
The Moscow State Chamber Choir
Artistic director and conductor Vladimir Minin
Recorded at the Smolensk Cathedral in 1985
The Russian and Bulgarian spiritual music belongs to the common Slavic music culture united not only by its more than a thousand-year age but also its high harmony of thoughts and feelings, by its openness and orientation to the unity of people.
Taking its origin from the Greco-Byzantine Church, the Slavic spiritual music merged with folk music and gave a birth to a synthesis unique in its identity and power of expression. This music reflects the national character of the Slavs, their world view, their human relations and nature, a troubled fate of the people and their amazingly poetic soul. This is arguably what makes this music's type of motion different from that of the catholic music. It is more likely a motion inside rather than outside, as if it is dynamics within statics.
The Bulgarian spiritual music on this disc was created on the basis of ancient Bulgarian church tunes. It belongs to the composers who worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dobri Hristov, a Bulgarian music classic, was the most significant of them. He was a director of one of the largest choir of the time of the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia.
The performers presented in this programme did not undertake the task of imitating the church signing. Rather, they were concerned about a moral and ethical meaning of the pieces expressed in a free concert form.
Evgeny Nesterenko is one of the outstanding masters of the opera scene. His career took off in Leningrad when still a conservatory student in the class of professor V.M. Lukanin he debuted in the Maliy Opera Theatre in 1963. Nesterenko's excellent vocal school, extraordinary musicality and inspired artistry were a guarantee of his brilliant performances at the 3rd International Contest of Young Opera Singers in Sofia and at the 4th International Tchaikovsky Competition. From 1967, he was a soloist of the Lenigrad Kirov Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, and from 1971 - of the Bolshoi Theatre of the USSR.
With invariable success, Nesterenko performed for appreciative audiences of such fampuse opera houses worldwide as La Scala, Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, Munich and Hamburg operas, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, San Francisco Opera, Hungarian National Opera and others.
The singer made a lot of recordings for such labels as Melodiya, Hungaroton, EMI, Ariola, Deutsche Grammophon, many of which were awarded international prizes.
Evgeny Nesterenko is a people's artist of the USSR, an owner of the State Prizes of the USSR and Russia, and numerous honorable awards and titles.
The artistic director and chief conductor of the Moscow State Chamber Choir, a people's artist of the RSFSR, a laureate of the State Prize of the USSR, professor Vladimir Minin is one of the country's leading choir conductors. His bright and distinctive talent, high professionalism, outstanding gift of a teacher, educator and organizer are highly recognized in the music community.
Vladimir Minin was born in Leningrad in 1929. He was a student of the Moscow State Conservatory and its graduate course led by professors V.G. Sokolov and A.V. Sveshnikov.
In 1971, Minin formed a chamber choir that comprised students and teachers of the Gnesins State Musical and Teaching Institute. A year later it became known as the Moscow Chamber Choir. For a comparatively short period, the choir led by Minin became one of the leading music ensembles of the country and acquired international reputation.
The programmes of the Moscow Chamber Choir are a reflection of the idea of living connection between the times and intergenerational continuity when compositions of a distant past - beautiful monuments of the national music culture - are organically combined with works of our contemporaries. The choir's repertoire includes ancient Russian music and Russian classics, works by the composers of the Renaissance, West European classics, works by contemporary foreign composers, and Russian folk songs. ( Melodiya )
