As we promised in our New Year greetings, The Northern Flowers are pleasing music lovers with three new compact discs at the very beginning of the year. Two of them are dedicated to “Wartime Music”: Semyon Kotko and Waltzes, suites of the genius Sergey Prokofiev (NF/PMA 9980), and several opuses of remarkable Leningrad author Yuri Kochurov, including his famous monumental symphony Macbeth are recorded by the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Alexander Titov (NF/PMA 9981).
The third program is titled “The Piano Art of Vladimir Nielsen.” In the centenary year of that prominent musician - pianist, organist, and professor of the Leningrad Conservatory, we offer to all admirers of the Master some of the archive recordings of the years 1955-1960 that Vladimir Vladimirovich made on the Kiev and Leningrad radio. Music of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Medtner, and Ravel is played (NF/PMA 9982).

Dear friends, colleagues, soul mates in music,
a happy New Year and merry Christmas to you from The Northern Flowers — with all our generous souls! We wish you more luck and health in the year 2010. And we will surely be amazing you with new creative and spiritual achievements. The main event of the forthcoming year will definitely be our traditional international chamber music festival, which is expected to be interesting and rich in musical discoveries as never before. It will be held from October 18 through 30, 2010 in St. Petersburg, Veliky Novgorod, Petrozavodsk, and Murmansk.
In the second half of May of the forthcoming year, we will set off for a second journey of The Northern Flowers. Its concerts will be held in St. Petersburg, in Veliky Novgorod, in Estonia (Narva, Tallinn, and Sillam?e), in Finland (Imatra and Rovaniemi), in cities of Norwegian Lapland (Alta, Vads?, Vard?, and Kirkenes), and in Nikel, Severomorsk and Murmansk.
In June 2010, we intend to produce a small, “cozy” festival of music at the Nabokov/Rukavishnikov memorial estate in the village of Rozhdestveno, Gatchina District, Leningrad Oblast. It will be an absolutely new project for The Northern Flowers, its main idea being to draw broad public attention to this unique monument of Russian culture.
Traditionally, we will release many interesting compact discs. As early as in February, music lovers will be able to hear archive recordings of Vladimir Nielsen, an excellent St. Petersburg pianist and long-time professor of our Conservatory (100th anniversary tribute to the master), and new programs of the “Wartime Music” series: works of Sergey Prokofiev and Yuri Kochurov. Our release plans for 2010 also include music of Orest Yevlakhov and Leonid Polovinkin, Reinhold Gliere and Yuri Shaporin.
In our small photo gallery you will find high points of the jubilee Northern Flowers 2009. Stay tuned to The Northern Flowers in the next year too, dear music lovers. Let it bring us all new exciting musical meetings!
Sincerely yours,
The Northern Flowers

The Petersburg Musical Archive has two new programs for music lovers to enjoy. We are releasing Volume 9 of the Wartime Music series, which is dedicated to the wartime music of Alexander Mossolov. The CD features the elegant and elegiac Cello Concerto No. 2 and the powerful Symphony in E major written for a giant orchestra scoring. The performers are Dmitry Yeremin, cello, and the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Alexander Titov (NF/PMA 9978.)
The second disc is an effort of Alexey Stadler, young and talented St. Petersburg cellist. The Northern Flowers remain true to their tradition of supporting young musicians. On this CD of Alexey Stadler and Karina Sposobina (piano), you will hear marvelous cello miniatures of Glazunov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Desyatnikov, Saint-Saens, Fauré, Verdi, Sibelius, Popper, and Messiaen (NF/PMA 9979)

Dear friends, we are ready to present the full program of the 10^th Northern Flowers International Chamber Music Festival. The events will be held in St. Petersburg, Veliky Novgorod, and Petrozavodsk for a whole week, from October 20 through 27. In the last ten years, the Festival has rightly become one of the most important cultural phenomena of St. Petersburg, a key component of its spiritual life. To this jubilee festival, we have invited the musicians who played a decisive role in the making of The Northern Flowers: pianist Eliane Rodrigues, the Vilnius String Quartet, the LEGE ARTIS chamber choir, and violinist Lydia Kovalenko of St. Petersburg. Music lovers will meet there excellent performers and amazing music — that is, true art.

programme (pdf): summary,  é complete

The St. Petersburg Musical Archive has released three disks of the Wartime Music series performed by the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony under the baton of Alexander Titov. They are: Symphony No.1 and Concerto for cello and orchestra (Dmitry Khrychov, cello) by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, one of the most important symphonists of the 20th century (NF/PMA 9973); Symphony No. 9 and music for theatralized programs Russian River and Native Leningrad by Dmitry Shostakovich (NF/PMA 9976); and Symphony No.2 ("Motherland"), soundtrack to the film The Turning Point, and Red Cavalry Campaign, a symphonic poster by Gavriil Popov (NF/PMA 9977).

The Northern Flowers are happy to announce the dates of the jubilee 10th Northern Flowers International Chamber Music Festival. The events will be held in St. Petersburg, Veliky Novgorod, and Petrozavodsk from October 20 through 27, 2009. Eight concerts in all are scheduled. Musicians who have played an important role in the festival’s making are invited to attend it. The programs of the concerts and the performers’ names will appear on our website soon.

The Northern Flowers present their three new programs. The first of two disks of the great Russian symphonist Gavriil Popov intended in the Wartime Music series (Symphony No.3 for strings and Symphonic Aria for cello and strings performed by the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony; Alexander Titov, conductor, and Dmitry Khrychov, cello; NF/PMA 9972). A next program with music of Boris Tischenko, this time completing his cycle of Dante Symphonies (Dante Symphonies Nos. 3 and 5; St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor; NF/PMA 9974). And a symphonic program of works of Lev Knipper, an amazing composer of tremendous scale (Concerto for violin and orchestra, Symphony No.8; St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony; Alexander Titov, conductor, and Mikhail Krutik, violin; NF/PMA 9975).

The Petersburg Musical Archive offers three new programs of the unique CD series titled “Wartime Music”. The St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Alexander Titov performs opuses of Nikolai Myaskovsky and Vladimir Scherbachov created in the years of severest ordeals of the Great Patriotic War. NF/PMA 9966: Symphonies No. 22 and No. 23 by Nikolai Myaskovsky, NF/PMA 9970: Symphony No. 5 and suite The Tobacco Captain by Vladimir Scherbachov, NF/PMA 9971: Symphonies No. 24 and No. 25 by Nikolai Myaskovsky.

The Northern Flowers and Musikk I Finnmark, a musical organization of the Norwegian province Finnmark, have detailed their new joint project titled “The Northern Flowers Journey”. This year, an international team of excellent musicians from Norway, Russia and Germany will perform chamber music concerts in St. Petersburg, Veliky Novgorod, Petrozavodsk, Kondopoga, Murmansk, Severomorsk, and in six cities in the north of Norway: Kirkenes, Vardo, Vadso, Tana, Hammerfest, and Alta. The musicians will start in St. Petersburg on May 17, and complete the tour in Hammerfest on May 29. On the concert programs are opuses by Schubert, Schumann, Spohr, Schostakovich, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff.

In 2009, the musical public of St. Petersburg is celebrating the 70th anniversary of composer Boris Ivanovich Tischenko, our prominent contemporary. By early January, The Northern Flowers prepared the release of three new albums of his music: Violin Concerto, Concerto for Cello, Seventeen Winds, Percussion, and Harmonium, and Soundtrack to the Motion Picture Suzdal (NF/PMA 9967);
Sonata for Cello Solo and Sonata for Piano and Bells (NF/PMA 9968), and Dante Symphony No. 4 (NF/PMA 9969).

Dear friends, a Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to you all! We wish you good luck and good health in the year 2009. As in previous years, The Northern Flowers will do its best to offer you interesting musical programs, festivals, and new compact disks. This is a special year for us. We will be ten years old in 2009. And we hope to celebrate this jubilee, our first one, in the company of our most loyal friends and partners.

Dear friends,
for the tenth time, The Northern Flowers open the door to the astoundingly rich world of chamber music. We tried to be true to ourselves, and as always, are happy to offer you interesting meetings with famous opuses — and absolutely new sound experience, with musicians who have been on the scene for decades — and with quite young performers.
Our Festival will be opened by Andrey Korobeinikov, a young Moscow pianist of great talent and formidable artistic prospects, prize winner at over twenty international competitions. His first recital in St. Petersburg will take place in the Glinka Hall of the Philharmonic on October 23, and we hope that music lovers will appreciate the talent of the superb musician. Moreover, Andrey Korobeinikov will appear with a very serious program of works by Schubert and Beethoven, such as the most excellent musicians generally include on their repertoire when they reach an age of performing maturity.
On Friday October 24, the Festival will invite its audience to the White Hall of Sheremetev Palace, a venue traditional for the Northern Flowers. The concert dedicated to the 20th century will feature an unusual virtuoso piece for clarinet by Norwegian composer Olav Berg, and striking piano miniatures by French classic Jean Francaix, and a deeply emotional string quartet by John Kinsella, one of Ireland’s leading composers, and The Russian Notebook, Valery Gavrilin’s vocal cycle of tremendous impact. Parisian pianist Bertrand Giraud and Petersburg singer Mila Shkirtil, performers already loved by the festival audience, will be joined in this concert by the remarkable Vanbrugh Quartet of Ireland and Norwegian clarinetist Anna Rostrup.
According to our tradition, a musical marathon will be held on one of the Festival’s days. “A Day of Music with The Northern Flowers” — this is how we called Saturday, October 25 at the Glinka Hall — will offer you five hours of the most exquisite musical impressions and meetings with live art and performers from five European countries. Petersburg’s singers will perform Anton Rubinstein’s Gedichte und Requien fur Mignon, a seldom-performed opus. Norwegian ensemble Noor, the world’s northernmost quartet, will perform music to Lapp tunes — and a piano quartet of Max Reger, classic of the last century’s German music. Bertrand Giraud, Anna Rostrup, Lydia Kovalenko, and Alexey Massarsky will join into an international quartet to play Quatuor pour la fin du temps of Olivier Messiaen, the great French master whose 100th anniversary the world celebrates this year. Franz Schubert’s songs will be presented in the marathon by prominent masters of the Lied art Mitsuko Shirai and Hartmuth Hoell from Germany. The evening will be topped with Johannes Brahms’s piano quartet, where Andrey Korobeinikov and the Vanbrugh Quartet will join in international artistic partnership.
The Sunday concert crowning the festival in St. Petersburg will be held in the cozy Raphael Gallery of Mikhaylovsky Castle. This musical evening will feature heritage of three centuries of human culture: a charming string quartet of Luigi Boccherini (the Vanbrugh Quartet, Alexey Massarsky), such precious pearls of German Romantic art as songs of Robert Schumann and Hugo Wolff (Mitsuko Shirai, Hartmuth Hoell), and the deep and extremely beautiful Piano Quartet of Alfred Schnittke (the Vanbrugh Quartet, Yuri Serov.)
As in the last year, the Festival will present one of its concerts to Veliky Novgorod. This time, the ensemble Noor will be the guests of Novgorod’s audience. On Monday, October 27 they will perform piano quartets of Max Reger and Bohuslav Martinu in the Philharmonic hall of that ancient Russian city.
Good luck, The Northern Flowers 2008!