MY RUSSIA: MUSICAL JOURNEY

Issue 1. Moscow. The program is dedicated to the lives and works of composers and musicians whose lives and destinies were intertwined with the capital: Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Chaliapin. The program was filmed in the houses-museums, the Leningrad Railway Station, the square of the Bolshoi Theatre, and the Moscow Conservatory. The experts of the program were Director General of the Russian National Museum of Music M. A. Bryzgalov, president of the Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck International Foundation, descendant of the Tchaikovsky and Davydov families Denis Andreevich von Meck, as well as experts from the Scriabin, Chaliapin and Prokofiev museums. Issue 2. Tver. As part of the program, Oksana Fedorova visits places of musical power of the city, which is often called the small St. Petersburg: the Philharmonic, the embankment, the Imperial Road Palace, Tver College of Music n. a. M. P. Mussorgsky, and two children’s music schools. Personalities who lived and created in the city were M. P. Mussorgsky, the «Russian diamond» Darya Leonova, Nikolay Lvov, the main popularizer of Russian folk instruments V. V. Andreev, the singer Sergei Lemeshev and the composer of the anthem of the USSR and modern Russia A. Alexandrov. As part of the program, we make a bridge between the past and the present and present young musicians who are developing the traditions of their great compatriots. Experts and participants in the program were musicologist N. Drozdetskaya, experts of the Road Palace, heads and students of music schools of the city.

Issue 3. Pskov. Pskov is one of the oldest cities in Russia whose history inspired Pushkin to create fairy tales on which Rimsky-Korsakov based his world famous operas. As part of the program, Oksana Fedorova travels through the most iconic places of her native city and reveals the stories of the lives of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, M. P. Mussorgsky, the great pianist Maria Yudina, the balalaika virtuoso Boris Troyanovsky, Sergei Diaghilev and Feodor Chaliapin, who were connected with Pskov and its cultural roots. Shooting points: The Pskov Kremlin, the Embankment, the Mirozhsky Monastery, the Pskov United Museum, the House of Folk Art, and the train station from which the journey begins. The program’s expert is musicologist Larina Nikitina. Issue 4. Kursk. Kursk is the nightingale region, one of the oldest cities in Russia first mentioned in the Life of Theodosius of the Kiev Caves 1032 according to historians. The main focus of the TV project in Kursk is the legacy of the great composer Georgy Sviridov. The film includes memorable places related to his life and work, e.g. the museum in Fatezh: the house where Sviridov spent the first four years of his life, famous for the fact that it still holds the piano the composer’s mother purchased for his first music lessons. The TV program also covers the creative life of the «Kursk nightingale» Nadezhda Plevitskaya, composer of many famous romances, founder of systematic music education in the Kursk province Arkady Abaza, and, of course, the contribution to the musical heritage of Russia of the most musical poet – Afanasy Fet. Musicologist Marina Kosmovskaya is the expert of the program.