Having recently been graduated from one conservatory and hired to teach at another, Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky set out to write his first large-scale work, his Symphony No. 1. No sense in starting small.
Russian expat Sergei Rachmaninoff, now esconced in the United States, started work on his Fourth Piano Concerto after having been exposed to American music for a number of years.
Leningrad Conservatory director kept his institution going through World War I and the upheavals of TWO revolutions, but his music failed to keep pace with what was going on in music in the first third of the 20th century.
Tune in this week for some lesser-known music from the Russian repertoire and see what you think.
