News

The Northern Flowers have released a new disk, this time in the MP3 format: Maria Petrova reads world classics of literature, stories for children, and folk fairy tales.

Maria Grigorievna Petrova, National Artist of Russia (1906-1992) is a legendary personality. She became a kind of very close relative for actually every family in Leningrad, a welcome guest in every home. For many generations of Leningrad people, her voice was not only recognizable but near and dear.

In 1934, the young actress of the Youth Theater was taken on the staff of the Leningrad Radio where she worked in the morning and afternoon, while still acting at the theater in the evening. Her radio position was for the children’s programs room, reading into the microphone tales by the Brothers Grimm, Hauff, Pushkin, Odoyevsky, Marshak, Chukovsky, and stories by Gaidar, Zhitkov, Mark Twain, and Panteleev.

Those known as “the children of the Siege” feel a special love the voice of M. G. Petrova. Poet Oleg Tsakunov called it “the symbolic voice of Leningrad, to which the soul responds so excitedly”.

This disk contains some recordings of Maria Petrova made in the wartime and right after the war.

The CD was released by the initiative and with support of Alexander Kadadin, a long-term partner of our annual festival.