Great music rarely makes for great activism, and the reverse is true on Pussy Riot’s official debut album. A scattergun mix of icy electronics, pumping EDM and whispered rap, CYKA (“bitch” in Russian) follows a decade of musical protest performances from the activist collective. Made by co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova (she and Maria Alyokhina were imprisoned in separate penal colonies between 2012 and 2013), CYKA’s powerful point of view is diluted by weak delivery.

The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Netherlands Radio Choir, under Chief Conductor Karina Canellakis, present Rachmaninoff: The Bells & Symphonic Dances, a powerful and deeply expressive interpretation of these late masterpieces by Sergei Rachmaninoff. In The Bells, radiant choral textures and richly coloured orchestration trace a journey from youthful shimmer and lyrical warmth to ominous tolling, overwhelming drama and a final vision of serene transcendence.

Igor Stravinsky is renowned for his legacy of glittering fairy tales in treasured favourites such as Petrushka and The Firebird. Another favourite is the ballet Pulcinella, a lovable melange of Baroque theatricality, heard here in its concert suite form. The other works in this programme are surprisingly less known: the luminous and symphonic Song of the Nightingale, and The Fairy’s Kiss based on Tchaikovsky’s music, are both derived from stories by Hans Christian Andersen. An astonishing rarity, The Faun and the Shepherdess is an ancient Greek tale that was Stravinsky’s romantically sensual gift to his young bride.

Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue, written and composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the early Russian epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of the 12th-century prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Cuman ("Polovtsian") tribes in 1185. He also incorporated material drawn from two medieval Kievan chronicles. The opera was left unfinished upon the composer's death in 1887 and was edited and completed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov. It was first performed in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1890.

The polyphonic choral concerto performed a cappella first appeared in Russian music at the beginning of the 18th century. Sacred in origin, it began as a multimovement setting of liturgical texts. Although it later became more secular in character, it nonetheless retained an elevated nature thanks to its use of Christian imagery. Most of the composers who worked in this genre were choirmasters and conductors, and inherited the traditions of the oldest professional choirs in Russia: the Moscow Synodal Choir and the Saint Petersburg Court Chapel.

Ivan Semyonovich Kozlovsk was a Soviet lyric tenor and one of the most well known stars of Russian opera, as well a producer and director of his own opera company, and longtime teacher at the Moscow Conservatory. People's Artist of the USSR (1940) and Hero of Socialist Labour (1980). According to Steven Kotkin (Waiting for Hitler, 594-95), he was Joseph Stalin's favorite singer.

“I am a rhapsode.” This is how composer Georgy Sviridov, who composed many works in a wide variety of genres, defined himself. He paid special attention to songs. And yet, there is some ambiguity in this definition. Rhapsodes in Ancient Greece were traveling singers who performed epic poems about the fates of heroes. But Sviridov’s music vividly reflects the history of ordinary people. “There was a lad was born in Kyle, // But whatna day o’ whatna style, // I doubt it’s hardly worth the while // To be sae nice wi’ Robin.” Sviridov wrote about such heroes, small and imperceptible, from the heights of grand narratives. Therefore, the definition of conductor, composer, and music theorist Mikhail Arkadyev would be more accurate. He called his senior colleague “modern” or “Russian Schubert.”

For Georgy Sviridov, a composer with a long and varied artistic biography, vocal music was one of the main directions Singing of an individual and glorifying the people is what Sviridov did repeatedly His catalog includes chamber monologues, focusing on the life, feelings and thoughts of an ordinary person, on a face that suddenly appears in the crowd, and large- scale pieces in which the people as a mass, as a community find their voice, and old tunes, which are non-composer music, suddenly recollected and rethought by the composer and turned into common words Among the vocal works, one of the most noticeable places was occupied by choral opuses.

Andrei Petrenko directs the Yekaterinburg Philharmonic Choir in a programme of famous folk melodies that draw on ancient traditions from the countries that used to be Soviet republics. The songs are performed in their original languages: Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Tatar, Latvian, Estonian and Armenian. Although these ethnic groups differ in their musical language, they converge in their desire to express themselves with the most natural of instruments – the human voice. This idea is echoed by the Russian playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, who declared, "Song is the soul of people".

A landmark of 20th-century vocal recording, Songs by Tchaikovsky and Britten unites the formidable talents of soprano Galina Vishnevskaya and cellist/conductor Mstislav Rostropovich. Released by Decca in 1970, this album is a profound exploration of romantic and modern art song, moving from the passionate, folk-tinged melancholy of Tchaikovsky to the stark, haunting intensity of Benjamin Britten's The Poet's Echo, a cycle written expressly for Vishnevskaya. The profound musical and personal synergy between these two artists—a legendary husband-and-wife duo—is palpable throughout, resulting in performances of raw emotional power, intellectual depth, and breathtaking virtuosity that stand as a definitive interpretation.

The new medium of film with sound was developing at around the time Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union, where in 1933 he composed the music for his first film, Lieutenant Kijé. Prokofiev’s remarkable perception of the medium’s requirements was enhanced by his collaboration with Sergey Eisenstein on Alexander Nevsky. The music was of epic proportions and the resultant cantata remains one of Prokofiev’s most brilliantly conceived and popular works. Leonard Slatkin’s classic VOX recordings of these works have been praised for their “powerful and compelling performances”. (ClassicsToday.com) The Elite Recordings for VOX by legendary producers Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be amongst the finest sounding examples of orchestral recordings.

Flee's new issue tries to document a Caucasian musical phenomenon mixing criminal songs, Adygean culture and post-Soviet society, and features original recordings of traditional songs, and contemporary reinterpretations by a selected line-up of electronicesque producers: Emmanuelle Parrenin & Colin Johnco, Misha Sultan, Zongamin, Minami Deutsch, Valentina Goncharova, Simone Aubert, and Ben Wheeler. Ulyap is a village in the Caucasus, where one can find an enormous number of accordion and harmonica players. Ulyap Songs: Beyond Circassian Tradition represents an attempt to document ancient bards' chants and their entanglement with popular rural heritage as well as post-Soviet culture during modern times, through a critical prism.

Acclaimed for her “superior vocal value” (Boston Globe), Soprano Hein Jung has performed in major cities throughout the US and Korea. These venues include Opera Tampa, Tanglewood Music Festival, San Francisco Opera Merola Program, Milwaukee Symphony, Madison Opera, St. Petersburg Opera, Bel Canto Chorus, Tampa Oratorios Singers.

Zara Aleksandrovna Dolukhanova was a Soviet Armenian mezzo-soprano who achieved fame performing on many lauded radio broadcasts of operas and works from the concert repertoire during the 1940s through the 1960s. Although considered one of Soviet-era Russia's most accomplished opera singers, Dolukhanova made only a relatively small number of appearances on the actual opera stage and her fame rests primarily in her extensive work for radio and performances on the concert stage.

The critical reception of Schumann's violin sonatas?like that of much of the composer's late output?has vacillated over the course of the intervening centuries. Written for and first performed by some of the leading violinists of the day, all three are now recognized for the masterpieces they undoubtedly are, needing no apology: and we are fortunate indeed to be in a position to enjoy such dedicated performances as these.