• Galina Ustvolskaya’s entire life (17 June 1919 - 22 November 2006) is bound up with one and the same city. She was born in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), and in 1939 entered Dmitri Shostakovich's composition class at the Conservatory as the only female student in his class. Shostakovich highly valued Ustvolskaya’s work and later said of her: "I am convinced that the music of G. I. Ustvolskaya will achieve worldwide renown, valued by all who perceive truth in music as paramount in importance”.

• Like many other Soviet composers she was accused of Formalism and was forced by the authorities to write accessible music “for the People”. This

unique 2CD set presents works from the fifties, that period of her life when she wrote in socialist realist style.

• Theses historic recordings are published here for the first time, with the permission of the Ustvolskaya Estate, and performed by the legendary

Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky and Arvids Jansons.

• A unique project, to coincide with the centenary of Ustvolskaya’s birth (1919), made possible by Alexei Lubimov, the Ustvolskaya Estate and the Ustvolskaya Archive.

Artists

Mikhail Turpanov (soloist), Bogdan Petrenko (soloist), Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, The Leningrad Radio Youth Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble-in-residence at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory The Studio for New Music, Moscow Boys Choir, Arvīds Jansons, Evgeny Mravinsky, Igor Borisoglebsky, Vladislav Lavrik