In August 2021, as the Salzburg Festival made a meticulously planned return to full capacity, Evgeny Kissin drew a sell-out crowd to the city’s Grosses Festspielhaus. He treated his audience to a strikingly original programme of works by Berg, Chopin, Gershwin and, to the surprise of some, Khrennikov. A generous selection of encores featured Mendelssohn and Debussy, as well as more Chopin and one of Kissin’s own compositions.

Firma Melodiya presents a complete set of orchestral music by one of the most influential domestic composers of the 20th century Tikhon Khrennikov. The musician headed the USSR Union of Composers for more than fifty years combining crucial organizational activities with a busy creative and educational work. His compositions were performed by some of the leading orchestras, music theatres and best-known performers of the Soviet Union. Then, due to social and political rather than artistic reasons, many of his works were consigned to oblivion. Today, when time puts everything into place, the best qualities of Tikhon Khrennikov's music return it to the concert bills and listeners' hearts. The composer's bright, Prokofiev-like sunny melodies, simplicity and clarity of the musical language, harmonic originality, and heartwarming and optimistic spirit, which were typical of his style since he was a young man, remained intact in his latter works as well. Khrennikov's prowess of symphonic drama and exquisite understanding of the concert genre and nature of each of the soloing instruments (piano, violin and cello) are needless to mention.

Tikhon Khrennikov was certainly an equivocal figure in the history of 20th-century Russian music. A composer with a tendency towards popular theatrical genres and lyricism, the naively optimistic nature of his music was soon noticed by the Soviet government, which took Khrennikov under its wing and appointed him Secretary of the reorganised Union of Composers in 1948 – a post he held for no less than 43 years. During his tenure in the role, Khrennikov witnessed the persecution of numerous artists who refused to comply with the USSR's dictated enthusiasm for all things socialist in musical culture. Such behaviour surely confirms his political stance, and yet it is known that Khrennikov on more than one occasion came to the aid of several musicians, protecting them from arrest and helping to forge the careers of many young and talented artists. This recording is historic in the sense that it features 3 Soviet child prodigies: Yevgeny Kissin, Maxim Vengerov and Vadim Repin, now household names in western musical life, then the perfect examples of successful Soviet education and training. Khrennikov himself is the soloist in his 3rd piano concerto.