After the LGT Young Soloists became the first youth orchestra in the world to be taken on by RCA Red Seal/Sony, releasing their debut CD Italian Journey (2015) featuring mainly works by Italian composers, the young string players now turn east for their second release. The Moscow-based composer and arranger Paul Struck has arranged most of the works to be heard on Russian Soul especially for the LGT Young Soloists. Thus, Glinka’s The Lark, first transcribed for piano by Balakirev, is now heard in a completely new orchestration.
On Russian Soul, as Artistic Director Alexander Gilman notes in the CD booklet, the LGT Young Soloists use their fine-tuned sense for the soul’s vibrations and their own, intuitive approach to the melancholy music of great Russian composers to convey its full emotional breadth to their audience. Fine examples are their interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Valse-Scherzo Op. 34, featuring the 20-year-old violinist David Nebel, of The Lark by Mikhail Glinka and M. A. Balakirev, performed by the 12-year-old Russian pianist Eva Medvedko, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Serenade Op. 37, played by the 15-year-old Samuel Weilacher on the cello. Together and as an orchestra, the young talents of the LGT Young Soloists can be heard in Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky Op. 35a by Anton Arensky.
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