Firma Melodiya presents a complete set of orchestral music by one of the most influential domestic composers of the 20th century Tikhon Khrennikov.
The musician headed the USSR Union of Composers for more than fifty years combining crucial organizational activities with a busy creative and educational work. His compositions were performed by some of the leading orchestras, music theatres and best-known performers of the Soviet Union. Then, due to social and political rather than artistic reasons, many of his works were consigned to oblivion.
Today, when time puts everything into place, the best qualities of Tikhon Khrennikov's music return it to the concert bills and listeners' hearts. The composer's bright, Prokofiev-like sunny melodies, simplicity and clarity of the musical language, harmonic originality, and heartwarming and optimistic spirit, which were typical of his style since he was a young man, remained intact in his latter works as well. Khrennikov's prowess of symphonic drama and exquisite understanding of the concert genre and nature of each of the soloing instruments (piano, violin and cello) are needless to mention.
The featured symphonic and concert works by Tikhon Khrennikov are performed by such outstanding conductors as Evgeni Svetlanov, Dmitri Kitayenko and Maxim Shostakovich, and soloists as Mstislav Rostropovich, Vadim Repin and others. The author who studied under Heinrich Neuhaus and graduated the Moscow Conservatory as both a pianist and as a composer performs solo in three piano concertos.
