2004 Performers

A feast for your ears.

Bringing together some of the finest musical talent in the world, Russian Rhapsody is a magnificent celebration of culture and music. The programme has been carefully designed to delight and surprise!

Yuri Bashmet
Viola

Violist Yuri Bashmet, “without doubt one of the world’s greatest living musicians” (The Times)will headline another impressive list of top performers, including a rare London appearance by the Moscow Soloists. Composed of musicians nominated by professors at the Moscow Conservatory as the cream of the new generation of string players, the Moscow Soloists are known for their “astonishing precision and refinement” (The Independent).

Olga Borodina
Mezzo Soprano

Now the most sought after mezzo soprano, Olga Borodina’s voice is “powerful, pure and varying in nuance, timbre and colour from burnished copper to radiant amber” (Andante). A star of the Kirov Opera since 1987, she launched her international career in 1992 in London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden, where she performed to great acclaim with Placido Domingo in Samson and Delilah. She has since performed in all the major opera houses, including the Paris Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Mila and the Konzerthaus in Vienna. Her solo recording of Tchaikovsky Songs on the Philips Classic Label, was voted “Best Debut Recording 1994” by the jury at the Cannes Classical Music Awards. She was Honoured Artist of Russia in 1995, and has won various international competitions including New York in 1988 and Barcelona in 1989.

Alexander Toradze
Piano

Alexander Toradze is internationally recognised by musicians, critics and audiences alike as a masterful keyboard virtuoso in the grand Romantic tradition. Distinguished above all for the highly emotional intensity of his playing, he has enriched the great Russian pianistic heritage with his own boldly unorthodox interpretative conceptions, deeply poetic lyricism and intense passionate excitement. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Alexander Toradze graduated in 1978 from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. In 1983, while on tour with the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra of Moscow, he requested asylum at the American Embassy in Madrid and has since made his home in the United States, and repeatedly appeared with virtually every major North American orchestra, including those of New York, Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Washington DC. In August 1991, Alexander Toradze was appointed the Martin Endowed Professor in Piano at Indiana University South Bend, and members of his multinational piano studio have won honours at prestigious piano competitions and perform with orchestras and on recital series throughout the world.

Igor Butman
Saxophone

To say that the saxophonist Igor Butman is a Jazz musician ‘par excellence’ in Russia is not to say enough. “Butman is a musician with a God-given talent”, wrote major Russian daily Izvestia. Born in 1961 in Leningrad (now St.Petersburg), Igor Butman started playing the clarinet at the age of 11. In 1976 he entered the Rimsky-Korsakov College of Music, where during his second year he dropped the classical clarinet for the jazz saxophone. Igor Butman combines mastery of his chosen instrument with joy and freedom, yet clearly and unquestionably conveys his experiences through his music. Peter Watrous in The New York Times stated, “Igor Butman, a powerful tenor saxophonist turned in a thrusting, complex solo on a be-bop piece”. Ken Franckling in Jazztimes called Igor “A postbox performer with great stage presence, horn control and emotion...there is a deep resonance to his up-tempo playing and a mature softness to his balladry”.

Moscow Soloists

Composed of musicians nominated by professors at the Moscow Conservatory as the cream of the new generation of string players, the Moscow Soloists were founded by Yuri Bashmet in 1992. They have participated in Rostropovich’s Festival in Evian, France, the Montreux and Verbier Music Festivals in Switzerland, the Sydney Music Festival, the “BBC Promenade Concerts” in London, the “Prestige de la Music” at La Pleyel in Paris and “December Nights” in Moscow. The Moscow Soloists are today in great demand, having built a reputation for their “astonishing precision and refinement” (The Independent).