Belarusian music gained a large audience

Since January music of Belarusian composers has been transmitted at the “Orpheus” radio station. The collection of this radio station has recently been enriched by new recordings.

Russian musical radio channel “Orpheus” caters for the amateurs of classical music in different countries. Henceforth, on the “Orpheus” radio frequency, which broadcasts opera and symphony music and successfully coexists with “lighter” radio genres, one can also hear Belarusian music.

The recordings were made at two concerts in the Malaya Nikitsaya Concert Hall during the International Musical Festival in Moscow “The Present to the three-hundredth anniversary of St. Petersburg”. More than 30 radio stations paid attention to the festival. The Belarusian music was being performed by the State Symphony Orchestra of Russian TV and Radio under the conducting of Mikhail Snitko, the conductor of Belarusian State Theatre of Opera and Ballet. At the concert the following musical compositions were performed: Victor Voitik’s symphony suite “Zhabavy” that shows pronounced folklore sources and national dancing traditions; Andrej Mdivani’s 6th Symphony where a musical presentation of the Belarusian historic past can be traced, as well as his concert play “Ostinato”; the oboe concerto accompanied by the orchestra of Halina Horelskya. Besides the great symphonies, the program included Viacheslav Kuznetsov’s “Adagio for the imaginary ballet” – an independent performance that involves into the world of classical music as much as the musically beautiful “Adagio of Rosa and the Little Prince” from Eugenij Glebov’s ballet “the Little Prince”; Vladimir Soltan’s “Concert Waltz” – a vivid and brilliant example of the festive onset in music, etc.

For the State Symphony Orchestra of Russian TV and Radio these concerts can be regarded as the introduction into the Belarusian music and the exam on performing skills which they passed with flying colours. But the central figure of these two evenings was the conductor Mikhail Snitko who proved himself to be a highly professional and genuine artist. It’s not within everybody’s power to embrace at a concert such a wide range of genre peculiarities of the musical material. Nevertheless, maestro Snitko coped with the problem perfectly well. His wonderful command of conducting techniques and the deepest understanding of music make Mikhail Snitko unique, both as a musician and performer. He is deprived of the false artistry that substitutes very often the real art. Everything in Mr. Snitko strives to comprehend music as a form of art.

“The intention of the festival organizers to involve as many participants as possible attracted me. I was nicely impressed by the responses, as far as our composers are concerned. Belarusian music is said to have a lot of light, and warmth, that’s why it is expected to have bright future,” – said Mr. Snitko at his interview with the newspaper “Izvestia”.