Choir History

HISTORY OF THE A.V. SVESHNIKOV STATE ACADEMIC RUSSIAN CHOIR

In the mid-1930s, the Soviet state recognized the need to establish musical ensembles of national significance. Thus, in the same year, the State Symphony Orchestra and the USSR State Choir were founded.

On April 29, 1936, the Committee for Arts under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR issued an order:

“With the aim of promoting choral culture, and particularly Russian folk song, and creating an exemplary choral ensemble, the State Philharmonic shall, beginning May 5, 1936, undertake the formation of a State Choral Chapel consisting of 150 members.”

On February 26, 1937, the State Choir gave its first independent concert, featuring works by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Anton Arensky, Vladimir Ivannikov, as well as arrangements of Russian folk songs.

Despite the enthusiastic reception from the audience and favorable reviews, a change in leadership took place just a few days later by decision of the Committee for Arts: Alexander Sveshnikov was transferred to the Leningrad Choral Chapel, while Nikolai Danilin was appointed head of the State Choir, a position he held until May 1939.

Nikolai Danilin, who had performed Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and All-Night Vigil with the Synodal Choir, and in whose choir Fyodor Chaliapin would come to “improve his voice,” went on to become the chief choirmaster of the Bolshoi Theatre after the Revolution, as well as a teacher at the Choral College and the Moscow Conservatory.

Danilin played a pivotal role in shaping the distinctive artistic identity of the State Choir. He selected repertoire appropriate to the ensemble’s stature and established the principles that would guide its work.

For example, he considered it inappropriate for a choir to perform a cappella works and works with symphony orchestra within the same concert. He also regarded it as unacceptable to spend a long time rehearsing complex works that would subsequently be performed only once. He insisted that the country’s leading choir be treated with care and respect, and opposed using it as a merely “auxiliary” or “everyday” instrument for the performance of choral music.

After Danilin’s departure, from May 1939 to October 1940, his assistant and choirmaster, Konstantin Petrovich Vinogradov, served as acting artistic director.

Prior to this, he had worked at the K.S. Stanislavsky Opera Theatre. Later, from 1946 to 1965, he served as Chief Choirmaster of the A.V. Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble of the Soviet Army.

Following the events of 1940, and for the next four decades, the USSR State Choir was led by the great choral conductor, educator, organizer, and advocate of choral music Alexander Vasilyevich Sveshnikov.

By the time of his appointment, Sveshnikov had already worked with Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. He had also founded the All-Union Radio Committee Choir, which grew from a small ensemble into a versatile, highly professional choir with a rich repertoire. It was no coincidence that all of its singers were subsequently incorporated into the State Choir.

Sveshnikov devoted his life to choral music, constantly developing new approaches in the field and never limiting himself to a single position or area of activity. Even after becoming Chief Conductor of the State Choir, he continued for some time to serve simultaneously as director of the Leningrad Choral Chapel.

In 1937, Sveshnikov established a children’s choral school at the Chapel. In 1944, its students, returning from evacuation and passing through Moscow, became the first students of the Moscow Choral College, which Sveshnikov also founded. The boys’ choir of the Moscow College would later frequently perform alongside the State Choir.

In 1944, Alexander Vasilyevich Sveshnikov became Dean of the Conducting and Choral Faculty at the Moscow Conservatory, and in 1948 he was appointed its Rector, a position he held for 26 years.

In 1957, he became the principal founder and Chairman of the All-Russian Choral Society. Thus, for nearly three decades, Sveshnikov effectively stood at the forefront of choral art and choral education in the USSR.

The significance of the Choir’s work in the field of folk music cannot be overstated. Folk, revolutionary, factory, rural, and urban songs became a cornerstone of its repertoire.

Alexander Vasilyevich himself created numerous outstanding choral arrangements of folk songs. He also repeatedly wrote about the importance of preserving Russian culture through folk song, emphasizing the need for choral art to learn from its traditions and to “speak” to the listener through them.

“In the 1940s, the ensemble gained extraordinary popularity precisely because, through the noise and din of official state-sponsored musical culture, the choir’s sound would at times reveal an old, deeply heartfelt song-like intonation that reached the listener’s soul.”

This aspect of the Choir’s work was also of exceptional importance to composers. It is known, for example, that “Sviridov’s Five Choruses to Poems by Russian Poets were written under the influence of the performance style of the State Russian Choir conducted by Sveshnikov,” writes A.S. Belonenko, a scholar of Georgy Sviridov’s work and President of the Sviridov Institute.

STATE RUSSIAN SONG CHOIR

In 1942, the ensemble was renamed the State Russian Song Choir. During the Great Patriotic War, its specific mission under this new name was to “bring Russian song, in all its diversity and richness, to the people and awaken in them a profound sense of patriotism.”

Performances in Leningrad, on the front lines of the Soviet forces, and in the liberated cities of Europe have become an enduring part of the Choir’s history.

Authentic testimonies have survived from Soviet soldiers who heard the Choir conducted by Sveshnikov in Czechoslovakia in 1945:

“As you listen to the song The Evening Bell, it seems as though a broad river, glowing red in the sunset, appears before your eyes. From the opposite bank, the muted ringing of the bells slowly carries across the still evening air. Then comes the spirited song of the factory workers, followed by another telling of Russian sailors who fought and died beneath the St. Andrew’s flag…”

“After listening to the State Russian Song Choir, your heart feels light and joyful, as though you had visited your homeland. You can almost see the free-flowing Volga, the broad Dnieper, the boundless expanses across which swift troikas race. From the distant past come the songs of the barge haulers; you see, as if in a dream, the dances of young women and the boisterous groups of factory workers. The songs recall fierce battles of old, while their melodies convey the spirit of a heroic people.”

The Choir has worked with such outstanding conductors as Alexander Gauk, Nathan Rakhlin, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Igor Markevitch, and János Ferencsik.

THE SVESHNIKOV SCHOOL

After Sveshnikov’s death in 1980, the State Choir was led by a succession of conductors. Remarkably, almost all of them were connected in one way or another to his school — either having studied directly under his guidance (Vladimir Minin and Boris Tevlin studied in Sveshnikov’s postgraduate programme), or having been educated at institutions he headed.

Yevgeny Tytanko and Igor Raevsky studied at the Moscow Choral College, while Igor Agafonnikov studied at the Moscow Conservatory during Sveshnikov’s tenure as rector. Yevgeny Volkov, a student of Boris Tevlin, also continued this artistic and pedagogical tradition.

From 1980 to 1987, the Choir was led by Igor Germanovich Agafonnikov, People’s Artist of the RSFSR and Professor at the Moscow Conservatory.

Agafonnikov served as a choirmaster at the Bolshoi Theatre (1958–1989), Artistic Director of the Red Banner A.V. Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble of the Soviet Army (1987–1994), and Chief Choirmaster of the K.S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre (1995–1998). He was also one of the founders of the Moscow Patriarchate Male Choir.

With the State Choir, he conducted the first performances in the USSR of Joseph Haydn’s The Creation and J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. He also took part in the premiere performance of Mikis Theodorakis’s Symphony No. 3 in Athens and gave the first performance in the country of Olivier Messiaen’s Three Small Liturgies.

Under his direction, the Choir expanded its repertoire to include works from the pre-Glinka period and undertook concert tours to Yugoslavia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

From 1991 to 1995, the Choir was led by People’s Artist of Russia Yevgeny Sergeyevich Tytyanko.

For more than 20 years prior to this, he had served as a choirmaster with the A.V. Alexandrov Red Banner Ensemble, and from 1985 he worked with the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.

Thanks to his efforts, in 1992 the ensemble was officially given the name of A.V. Sveshnikov.

Under Tytyanko’s leadership, the Choir undertook concert tours across Russia, the United States, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and China. During his tenure, the ensemble also took an active part in recordings of operatic productions by Alexander Serov, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

For 12 years, from 1995 to 2007, the Choir was led by Igor Ivanovich Raevsky, People’s Artist of the RSFSR, People’s Artist of Russia, Honored Artist of Belarus, recipient of the State Prize of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, choirmaster, military conductor, educator, and colonel.

Over the course of his career, he directed a number of Song and Dance Ensembles: that of the Air Force Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, the Belarusian Military District, the Central Group of Soviet Forces in Czechoslovakia, the Moscow Air Defense District, and the A.V. Alexandrov Academic Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army.

Under his leadership, the State Choir became a regular participant in the Days of Slavic Writing and Culture, performing throughout Russia and abroad. The ensemble visited North Korea and Taiwan for the first time and, in 2000, took part in the inauguration of President Vladimir Putin.

The years 2008–2012 marked another vibrant and highly productive chapter in the Choir’s history. The position of Artistic Director was assumed by People’s Artist of Russia, State Prize of Russia laureate, and Professor Boris Grigoryevich Tevlin.

For many years, Tevlin led the Moscow Conservatory Student Choir (1979–1991), and from 1995 he was the founder and director of the Moscow Conservatory Chamber Choir. Upon joining the State Academic Russian Choir, he immediately revitalized its concert activity.

Under Tevlin’s direction, the Choir took part in the Festival of World Symphony Orchestras, the Moscow Easter Festival, and the April Spring Festival in North Korea. It prepared programmes with such distinguished conductors as Mikhail Pletnev, Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Tatarnikov, Alexander Sladkovsky, and Alexander Rudin.

The ensemble toured extensively throughout Russia — including St. Petersburg, Lipetsk, Ryazan, Kasimov, Nizhny Novgorod, Tula, Saratov, Kazan, Orsk, Orenburg, Yessentuki, and Stavropol — as well as abroad in Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, and Japan.

The repertoire combined the great choral classics with works by contemporary composers, including Rodion Shchedrin, Alfred Schnittke, Boris Tishchenko, Alexey Rybnikov, Roman Ledenev, Alexander Zhurbin, Alexandra Pakhmutova, Rodion Boyko, Konstantin Volkov, and Yury Falik.

From 2012 to 2019, the Choir was led by Yevgeny Kirillovich Volkov, a student and assistant of Boris Tevlin and choirmaster of the Moscow Conservatory Chamber Choir, who later became choirmaster of the A.V. Sveshnikov State Choir.

Volkov continued the Choir’s active collaboration with leading musicians and ensembles of his time, including the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia, the Russian National Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic Academic Symphony Orchestra, and the orchestras of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Theatres, among others.

In 2013, the Choir recorded the National Anthem of the Russian Federation, conducted by Yury Simonov. In 2016, the ensemble created the soundtrack for the closing concert of the World Choir Games in Sochi.

The Choir also took part three times — in 2015, 2016, and 2017 — in the international project “Russia Day in the World — Russian Day,” performing in Paris, London, and Jerusalem.

From 2020 to 2024, the Choir was led by People’s Artist of Russia Gennady Alexandrovich Dmitryak, a choral and symphonic conductor, Professor, and Artistic Director of the A. Yurlov State Academic Capella.

Gennady Dmitryak was one of the most distinguished choral conductors of his generation. He was a Professor at the Moscow Conservatory and the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music, and led the A. Yurlov Capella, which under his direction once again established itself among Russia’s leading choral ensembles.

Dmitryak regarded his principal task as restoring the distinctive artistic identity of the State Russian Choir and its traditional repertoire, built around Russian music: folk songs, sacred music, and the Russian and Soviet choral classics.

In August 2024, Ekaterina Yuryеvna Antonenko became the new Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Sveshnikov State Academic Russian Choir.

AWARDS AND HONORS