Offering to Svyatoslav Richter
(100th Anniversary from the birth)

The Moscow Soloists ensemble was founded by violist and conductor Yuri Bashmet in 1986. In 1992 the ensemble was completely revamped, taking in graduates and postgraduates of the Moscow Conservatoire. It made its debut on 19 May 1992 at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. Two days later it gave its first performance abroad, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. 

The ensemble has given concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Barbican Hall in London, the Tivoli in Copenhagen, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Sydney Opera House, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire.

The ensemble takes part in the Proms concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Mstislav Rostropovich Festival in Evian, Sony Classical sponsored concerts at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, Semaines musicales de Tours, Elba Isola Musicale d'Europa, December Nights, Prestige de la Musique at the Salle Pleyel, the World Chamber Orchestras Festival in Omsk and festivals in Ravenna, Montreux, Bath, Sydney, Qabala and Moscow. 

Since 2008 the ensemble takes part in the Sochi Winter Festival, of which Yuri Bashmet is Artistic Director. The Moscow Soloists take part in Bashmet’s Moscow International Viola Competition and his festivals in Yaroslavl, Khabarovsk, Rostov-on-Don, Minsk and the Seychelles. In January 2013 the ensemble appeared at a festival commemorating the maestro’s sixtieth birthday. 

The ensemble’s concerts are frequently broadcast and recorded by the world’s leading broadcasting companies, among them the BBC, Bayerische Rundfunk, Radio France and NHK. The orchestra has performed with Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Natalia Gutman, Viktor Tretyakov, Gidon Kremer, Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin, Sarah Chang, Shlomo Mintz, Barbara Hendricks, James Galway, Lynn Harrell, Mario Brunello, Thomas Quasthoff, Anna Netrebko, Olga Borodina, Jessye Norman and Yefim Bronfman. 

The repertoire of the Moscow Soloists includes over three hundred and fifty masterpieces of world classics and rarely performed works, ranging from Bach and Mozart to Schnittke and Denisov as well as music by Kancheli, Gubaidulina and other contemporary composers. 

In 2008 the Moscow Soloists received a Grammy award for its recording of music by Stravinsky and Prokofiev. In 1994, 2006 and 2009 the ensemble was a Grammy award nominee. 

In 2007, to mark fifteen years since it was founded, the ensemble undertook a tour of Russia, during which it gave forty-two concerts in thirty-nine towns and cities. In Ufa the musicians performed their one thousandth concert, while their concert in Severomorsk took place on the cruiser Peter the Great. The ensemble undertook an even larger tour to mark its twentieth anniversary, giving over eighty concerts in thirty countries. 

In the autumn of 2009 the Moscow Soloists undertook a tour of Russian towns and cities during which they performed on unique instruments crafted by Antonio Stradivari from the Russian State Collection of Prized Musical Instruments. In the 2013/14 season the ensemble’s musicians undertook a similar tour of Europe’s capital cities. 

In 2014 the ensemble took part in the cultural programme of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.

Novaya Rossiya State Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1990 by decree of the Russian Government. In 2002, Yuri Bashmet became the orchestra's Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, opening a new page in the ensemble's history. 

The orchestra has collaborated with renowned conductors and soloists, including Valery Gergiev, Tan Dun, Alexander Lazarev, Teodor Currentzis, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andres Mustonen, Maxim Vengerov, Jean-Luc Ponty, Barry Douglas, Peter Donohoe, Denis Matsuev, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Boris Berezovsky, Viktor Tretiakov, Gidon Kremer, Vadim Repin, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Sergey Krylov, Kristóf Baráti, Viktoria Mullova, Natalia Gutman, David Geringas, Alexander Knyazev, James Galway, Deborah Voigt, Anna Netrebko, Laura Kleikomb, Plácido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Patricia Cioffi, Elīna Garanča and ballet dancers Ulyana Lopatkina, Nikolai Tsiskaridze and Ilze Liepa as well as actors Konstantin Khabensky and Sergei Bezrukov.

Since 2002, the orchestra has given over 1000 concerts in Russia and abroad. Russian performances have taken place in Moscow and St. Petersburg, cities and towns of the Volga region and the Golden Ring, of the Urals and Siberia, while international tours have brought the musicians to countries like Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Republic of Korea, Spain, Switzerland, UK, Baltic and Nordic countries, and many others. 

The orchestra's repertoire combines classical and contemporary music of various styles and genres. It has premiered works by Gian Carlo Menotti, Edison Denisov, Mikael Tariverdiev, Sofia Gubaidulina, Giya Kancheli, Alexander Tchaikovsky, Tan Dun, Jean-Luc Ponty, Toru Takemitsu, Igor Raichelson, Emil Tabakov, Alexander Baltin, Vladimir Komarov, Boris Frankstein, Georgy Buzogly, Kuzma Bodrov and Alexey Sumak. 

The orchestra regularly appears at Yuri Bashmet's Winter International Arts Festival in Sochi and at international festivals in Yaroslavl, Rostov-on-Don and Minsk. It has taken part in the Mstislav Rostropovich Festival, Moscow Easter Festival, Guitar Virtuosi and Vivacello Festivals. The orchestra's discography includes works by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Alexander Tchaikovsky. 

In March 2007, the orchestra received a grant from the Government of the Russian Federation, followed by the Grant of the President of the Russian Federation in 2010. In 2014, Novaya Rossiya was involved in preparing and running the cultural programme of the 22th Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. 

In the 2021/22 season, the orchestra presents subscription concert cycles at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and the Rachmaninov Concert Hall (Philharmonia-2) in Moscow, some of which will focus on young audiences. Conductors Alexander Sladkovsky, Igor Razumovsky, Denis Vlasenko and soloists Alena Baeva, Gaik Kazazian, Viviane Hagner, Zlatomir Fang, Boris Berezovsky, Dmitry Masleyev, Olga Seliverstova, Yaroslav Abaimov and many others will appear alongside the orchestra throughout the season.

Yuri Bashmet is one of the most outstanding musicians of the present day. He studied music at the Moscow State Conservatoire under Vadim Borisovsky and Fyodor Druzhinin. Under the latter, Yuri Bashmet trained and held an assistantship at the Moscow Conservatoire (1976–1978). The start of his concert activities is connected with a tour to Germany by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, founded by Rudolf Barshai (1976). Since 1978, Yuri Bashmet has taught at the Moscow Conservatoire, as a lecturer (1988), and later as a professor (1996). Starting in 1980, Yuri Bashmet has regularly given master classes in Japan, Europe, America and Hong Kong. His students, several of whom have gone on to become prize-winners at international competitions, perform with the world’s greatest orchestras.

In 1986 Yuri Bashmet formed the chamber orchestra Moscow Soloists. Later, several musicians took the decision to remain in France, while Yuri Bashmet abandoned leadership of the orchestra, which soon after ceased to exist. In 1992 Yuri Bashmet founded a new ensemble using the old name, its members the most talented young musicians of Russia, graduates and post-graduate students of the Moscow Conservatoire. 

In 1996 Yuri Bashmet established the Experimental Viola Faculty at the Moscow Conservatoire, where in addition to solo viola works the repertoire was expanded to include viola roles in chamber, opera and symphony music as well as a strong focus on the history of performing styles from the past and present. 

The geography of the musician’s appearances is vast: it includes the finest concert halls of Europe, the USA, Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. For the first time in world performing practice, Yuri Bashmet gave solo viola concerts in such venues as Carnegie Hall (New York), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), the Barbican Hall (London), Berliner Philharmoniker, La Scala (Milan), the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire and the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. 

His solo concerts and ensemble appearances with other outstanding performers never fail to pack halls and rouse lively interest. Musicians with whom Yuri Bashmet has performed include Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern, Gidon Kremer, Marta Argerich, Oleg Kagan, Natalia Gutman, Viktor Tretyakov, Rafael Kubelik, Seiji Ozawa, Valery Gergiev, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, Yehudi Menuhin, Charles Dutoit, Neville Marriner, Paul Sacher, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kurt Masur, Bernard Haitink, Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Yuri Temirkanov and Nikolaus Harnoncourt to name but a few. 

Yuri Bashmet’s concert programs are unusually varied and include music from various styles and eras. Many contemporary composers have dedicated or specially written works for him. These include Schnittke’s concerto, Monologue and Concert for Three (dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, Yuri Bashmet and Gidon Kremer), concerti by Gubaidulina, Аlexander Tchaikovsky, Balakauskas, Eshpai and Ruders, Golovin’s Sonata Breve, Raskatov’s viola sonata and Kancheli’s Liturgy and Styx. 

Yuri Bashmet is the founder and jury chair of Russia’s only International Viola Competition (Moscow) as well as president of the International Lionel Tertis Viola Competition in the United Kingdom. He is the recipient of various awards and regalia from Russia as well as from other nations. In 1995, he received the Sonnings Musikfond Prize, one of the most prestigious in the world, which was conferred in Copenhagen. Previous recipients of this award include Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, Arthur Rubinstein, Dmitry Shostakovich, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sviatoslav Richter and Gidon Kremer.

Among the world’s most renowned cellists, Natalia Gutman was born in Kazan, Russia into a musical family, receiving her first cello lessons at age five from her grandfather, Anisim Berlin, a respected violinist and student of the great Leopold Auer. By that time the family had moved to Moscow, and the young Natalia soon entered the Moscow Conservatory, studying for thirteen years with Galina Kosolupova. Upon graduation, she worked privately with the legendary Mstislav Rostropovich. Another early influence was pianist Sviatoslav Richter, whom she first heard and admired as “a kind of musical God” at age 14, and later had the privilege of recording with—including several works included here at the Classical Archives. Richter himself would later return the esteem, calling Gutman “an incarnation of truthfulness in music.”

Her career ascended as a result of several awards from major festivals, including a Gold Medal at the Vienna World Youth Festival (1959), Third Prize in the Tchaikovsky Competition (1964), First Prize in the International Dvoràk Festival (1966), and a Gold Medal at the ARD (German Radio) Competition in Munich (1967)—the latter in the chamber music category with pianist Alexai Nasedkin. Following these successes, Ms. Gutman began an illustrious concert and recording career, performing on all continents with such major orchestras as the Vienna, Berlin, Munich and St. Petersburg Philharmonics, the London Symphony, the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, and many others. Among the celebrated conductors she has worked with include Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Mazur, Riccardo Muti, Mstislav Rostrapovich, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Yuri Temirkanov. As a chamber musician, she has worked closely with such artists as Sviatoslav Richter, Alexei Lubimov, Issac Stern, Elliso Wirssaladze, Evgeny Kissin, and perhaps most importantly her late husband, the great violinist Oleg Kagan (d. 1990)—whose influence on the musical identity of Ms. Gutman must be considered paramount.

While Ms. Gutman has performed the entire breadth of the cello repertory from the Baroque forward (note her superb performance of the Bach Cello Suites Nos.1 and 3), her greatest focus has been on contemporary works. She has performed numerous premiers, including several works explicitly written for her by celebrated Russian composers Alfred Schnittke, Edison Denisov, and Sofia Gubaidulina. We are fortunate to have performances of both works by Schnittke and that of Gubaidulina. In recent years, and especially since the death of her husband, Ms. Gutman has focused much on assisting young chamber musicians. This includes the workshops entitled “Berlin Encounters” she co-founded with pianist Claudio Abbado. Further, she continues the international music festival held each July in the Bavarian Alps that was originally founded by her husband, and is now named in his honor.