Marking the International Music Day: The exhibition “Service to Russian music. Selected works” open in Moscow

The Russian National Museum of Music (Moscow) continues to introduce its visitors to the exhibits, the tales of which have been featured in the program Expomusic on Orpheus Radio.

The exhibition Service to Russian music. Selected works features over 50 exhibits from the collections of the museum which allow visitors to trace the development path of Russian music from the founders of national traditions to the classics of the XX century. The historical panorama unfolds from Mikhail Glinka to Sergei Prokofiev and covers the composition schools, formed in the XIX century: Petersburg (Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov) and Moscow (Tchaikovsky, Arensky, Rachmaninoff).

Materials of the exposition demonstrate the diversity of genres, specific to Russian music of the XIX-XX centuries – the unique museum exhibits include musical masterpieces. These are the opera The Golden Cockerel by Rimsky-Korsakov, ballet Swan Lake and the program-symphonic composition Italian Capriccio by Tchaikovsky, orchestral transcription of the famous piano play Islamey by Balakirev, as well as vocal works: song Lily of the Valley by Arensky based on Tchaikovsky’s lyrics, choirs Lord! Do good to the people! based on Glinka’s melody and Ode to the end of the war by Prokofiev.

Remarkable Russian composers have also shown themselves in the performing field: Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev were brilliant pianists. The exhibition displays a unique document – a program of the first performance of Rachmaninoff in an amateur concert.

Musical and patriotic arc unites the XIX and XX centuries – these are Glinka’s melody which in the 1990s became the hymn of the Russian Federation and Prokofiev’s Ode to the end of the war, written in the year of the end of the Great Patriotic War (at the same time the composer finished working on the opera War and Peace). Both compositions express the deep essence of the Russian mentality, by emphasizing through musical means the idea of national unity and historical optimism in difficult and fateful times of the Fatherland.

The exposition illustrates how the service of remarkable Russian composers and musicians to their art became their valuable contribution to world culture.

The exhibition will run until December 11, 2022.