Conductors of the Soviet Russian Era
Vladimir Putin at award ceremonies (2017-05-24) with Gennady Rozhdestvensky. By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59257116
Modern music was banned in the Stalinist period of the Soviet Union. In the thaw that followed Stalin, one of the major conductors who introduced modern music to Russians was Gennady Rozhdestvensky. He played such works as Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" to Russian audiences, and in the West, he introduced audiences to the works of Albert Schnittke.
On this week's Classics of the Phonograph, Saturday at 11 am on WILL-FM, we will play samples from Rozhdestvensky's recordings.