Firma Melodiya presents a collection of selected choral and symphonic works by Georgy Sviridov. His music, inextricably linked with the centuries-old national traditions of Russian culture, has always been perceived as truly modern. Its extraordinary sincerity and simplicity of expression, lyrical emotion and tunefulness continue to win the listeners. According to Sviridov, he was always bent “to choral singing, to the union of souls in sounds, in joint harmony”. The collection presents the composer’s first opus for a cappella choir, Five Choruses to Poems by Russian Poets (1958), performed by the Leningrad Glinka State Academic Capella directed by Vladislav Chernushenko. This is the first time Melodiya releases the choral cycle Night Clouds written to the verses of Alexander Blok and performed by Vladimir Minin and the Moscow Chamber Choir, as well as a concert recording of the cantata Spring written to the verses of Nikolai Nekrasov (a fragment from his poem Who is Happy in Russia?), one of the last recordings made by maestro Alexander Yurlov and the Republican Academic Choir. The choral program is complemented by the amazing music from the Moscow Maly Theatre’s production of Aleksey Tolstoy’s Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich. The symphonic portion includes the very popular suites from the motion pictures The Blizzard (1964) and Time, Forward! (1966), as well as lesser-known orchestral compositions Little Triptych and Music for Chamber Orchestra (both 1964). The orchestral compositions are played by the Grand Symphony Orchestra of All-Union Radio conducted by Vladimir Fedoseyev and Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Barshai.