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Biography,
first part
Evgeny Svetlanov was born in Moscow on 6 September 1928 into a family of
musicians and artists. His parents were both members of the Bolshoi Theatre
company and his mother, née Kruglikova, appeared as Tatyana in “Eugene
Onegin ” and performed the lead role in “Madame Butterfly ”
: from early childhood, Evgeny was captivated by the theatre and for example
appeared as the son of Cio-Cio-San on the most prestigious lyrical stage
of the Soviet Union (it was precisely in memory of this recollection that
he conducted his last performance of Puccini’s opera in Montpellier, one
month before his death – thus the cycle was ended).
He studied at the Gnessin school until 1951 and at the Moscow Conservatory
until 1955, attending the conducting classes of Mikhail Gnessin and Yuri
Chaporin, whose oratorios and cantatas he subsequently recorded; his piano
teacher was the great Heinrich Neuhaus ; his conducting mentor was Alexander
Gauk, the founder of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra in 1936 and an emblematic
figure of modern interpretation. As Svetlanov explains, “Before the Revolution,
even though there were some excellent conductors, such as Balakirev and
Rubinstein, there was no genuine Russian conducting school: Gauk created
it and if only for this his name should remain in the annals of our musical
history”. Celebrities such as Alexander Melik-Pacheiev and Evgeny Mravinsky
also studied under Gauk.
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A Return to the Bolshoi
By
George W. Loomis
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Svetlanov gave his first
concert performances as a conductor on the radio as early as 1953, while
he was still a student. Two years later, he returned to the Bolshoi as principal
assistant: in 1962, he was appointed principal conductor, becoming honorary
principal conductor in 1999, when he conducted a new performance of “The
Maid of Pskov” He had become familiar with the great operas of Tchaikovsky,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin and Mussorgsky, as well as a large number of ballets
that enabled him to perfect his technique and his knowledge of Russian musical
literature while facing the constraints of alternating performances in a
repertory theatre. In 1964, he led the Bolshoi’s first tour in Italy, which
proved a resounding success.
The following year, Evgeny Svetlanov took over the USSR State Symphony Orchestra,
which he had known for ten years, and headed the orchestra for over thirty
five seasons, ranging from subscription concerts in Moscow (and all over
the Soviet  Union)
to phenomenally successful overseas tours and a countless number of recordings:
during his tenure with the orchestra the maestro recorded an anthology of
Russian music covering both the entire romantic and post-romantic period
to modern times. This was a monumental task that Svetlanov conducted methodically
over twenty five years while interpreting, both on record and in the concert
hall, the German ( from Mozart to Schönberg, with a marked preference for
Mahler) and French repertoires (Debussy, Ravel and Dukas,with the notable
exception of Berlioz). Two hundred and fifty CDs would be required in order
to republish this anthology which represents an encyclopaedia of Russian
symphony and concert works. However Svetlanov completed over three thousand
recordings throughout his career for Russian, Japanese, French, British
and Dutch record companies. 
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