Sebastopol Symphony / Music for Orchestra / The Wind of Siberia

Boris Tchaikovsky, one of the quintessential figures of the last fifty years of Russian music, is almost unheard of by the world's listeners, a situation all the more shocking since his music has been performed by such famed musicians as Kirill Kondrashin, Rudolf Barshai, Mstislav Rostropovich and Igor Oistrakh. Tchaikovsky was a pupil of Shostakovich and Myaskovsky and his distinctive work has a charm and accessibility which may well be informed by his commercial film-score writing. It could be that Tchaikovsky's name is met with silence because audiences have been drawn in by more conspicuously contemporary music and have failed to detect the originality behind the seemingly traditionalist façade of his works.

The works on this disc represent some of Boris Tchaikovsky's finest orchestral music, and the release marks the start of a mini-series of Boris Tchaikovsky historical recordings which will feature some major Russian artists.