Carmen-Suite / Anna Karenina

The Carmen Suite was originally composed by Rodion Shchedrin in 1967 as a transcription of Georges Bizet's opera, specifically created for his wife, the legendary ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. Commissioned for the Bolshoi Theatre, the work reimagines the opera's familiar themes through the instrumentation of strings and percussion, offering a stark, modernist contrast to the original score. It emerged during a period where Soviet composers were finding ways to modernize classical tropes, and despite early resistance from traditionalists who found the arrangement unconventional, it eventually became one of Shchedrin's most performed and enduring compositions.

The 1996 Melodiya release serves as a definitive pairing, coupling the Carmen Suite with the orchestral music from Shchedrin's ballet adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Melodiya, the state-owned Soviet record label, curated these performances by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra under Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra under Evgeni Svetlanov to preserve the definitive Russian interpretations of the works. The collection is highly regarded by critics for its technical precision and the emotive, idiomatic command both conductors bring to Shchedrin’s complex, percussive musical language.