Sviridov, Snowstorm

I came to know the music of Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov (1915-1998) almost entirely through Professor Carol. One of her best lectures preceded a concert in the Van Cliburn Series by the late Russian singer Dmitri Hvorostovky. He was performing Sviridov’s song cycle Russia Cast Adrift, which is a work I hope to feature here someday once I find a suitable performance.

At about that time, Alexander Belonenko, Carol’s good friend from her Leningrad days and nephew of Sviridov had become executor of his estate, and that led to numerous interesting conversations concerning both music and the complications of copyright law in the Soviet era.

And when Carol began leading tours for the Smithsonian, we took a river cruise from St. Petersburg to Moscow along the Volga. Carol has subsequently made that voyage many times on the elegant Volga Dream. We put into numerous ports along the way, and every time we set sail, they played the Waltz from Sviridov’s Snowstorm (at 3:06 in this performance).

The music was originally written in 1964 for the film “The Snow Storm” based of the same name by a tale by Alexander Pushkin. This suite was created from that material ten years later.