[Decisive Performance!] Festive Overture (Shostakovich) Svetlanov USSR State Symphony Orchestra 

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[Decisive Performance!] Festive Overture (Shostakovich) Yevgeny Svetlanov - The USSR State Symphony Orchestra
Recorded in 1978 (Melodiya label)
This is a transcription from an analog record.
Due to the recording quality of the master, there may be some difficult-to-hear parts.
The Festive Overture Op. 96 is an orchestral work composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1954.
Commissioned for the Bolshoi Theatre's celebration of the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution, the score has since become one of the most enduring of Shostakovich's occasional scores.
At the time the Festive Overture was composed, Shostakovich was engaged with the Bolshoi Theatre as a musical consultant.
The commission resulted from an impromptu visit to the composer's apartment by Vassili Nebolsin, who came to express the Bolshoi's urgent need of a celebratory work on short notice.
With only three days to meet the deadline, Shostakovich agreed to provide an appropriate work and immediately began to compose the Festive Overture.
Within an hour, Nebolsin began to send couriers to the composer's apartment to pick up the score page by completed page, who then took them to the Bolshoi's music copyists in order to prepare the parts for performance.
The premiere of the score took place on November 6, 1954 at the Bolshoi, with the house orchestra conducted by Alexander Melik-Pashayev.
The Russian conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov (1928-2002) was also a composer and pianist.
Svetlanov was born in Moscow and studied conducting with Aleksandr Gauk at the Moscow Conservatory.
From 1955 he conducted at the Bolshoi Theatre, being appointed principal conductor there in 1962.
From 1965 he was principal conductor of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra (now the Russian State Symphony Orchestra).
In 1979 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Svetlanov was also music director of the Residentie Orchestra (The Hague) from 1992 to 2000 and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 1999.
Svetlanov was particularly noted for his interpretations of Russian works - he covered the whole range of Russian music, from Mikhail Glinka to the present day.
He was also one of the few Russian conductors to conduct the entire symphonic output of Gustav Mahler.
The USSR State Symphony Orchestra, recognizing the significant contributions of Svetlanov, changed its name to the State Academic Symphony Orchestra "Evgeny Svetlanov" in 2006.

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