St Petersburg Philharmonic

The St. Petersburg Philharmonic last appeared at Prague Spring in 2012, when the orchestra and its principal conductor Yuri Temirkanov accompanied the violinist Julia Fischer. The orchestra, the history of which dates back to 1882, will be presenting itself in Prague on two concerts with programmes consisting exclusively of the music of Dmitri Shostakovich. That composer is associated with the orchestra, formerly known as the Petrograd and then the Leningrad Philharmonic, thanks to his friendship and close collaboration with the legendary conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, who led the orchestra for an incredible fifty years. Their association amounted to a special alliance of two musical geniuses – for example, Shostakovich dedicated his Symphony No. 8 in C minor Op. 65 to Mravinsky, and the Leningrad Philharmonic gave the world premieres of eight of the composer’s fifteen symphonies.

Julian Rachlin is yet another of the child prodigies of the Russian school of violin playing, although at the age of four he emigrated with his family to Austria and settled permanently in Vienna. At the age of 14, he became the youngest soloist in history to have played with the Vienna Philharmonic. He has collaborated with Riccardo Muti, Bernard Haitink, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, André Previn et al. He makes recordings for the Sony Classical, Warner Classics, and Deutsche Grammophon labels. He is significantly involved with charitable projects, and he has been a UNICEF ambassador since 2010.