poster for 2018 Creative Capitals Disc 7
× Built in 1703 by Peter the Great to be a cosmopolitan, Western–style metropolis, St. Petersburg emerged over subsequent decades as the center of Russian musical culture. It was in St. Petersburg that Mikhail Glinka, the progenitor of Russia’s classical music tradition, built his career and that Anton Rubinstein founded the city's storied conservatory, which produced such towering artists as Dmitry Shostakovich. A little over one thousand miles away, two other luminary composers made Leipzig their home: Felix Mendelssohn, who served as Director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and founded the Leipzig Conservatory, and Robert Schumann, whose mighty Piano Quintet concludes the disc. This disc brings together the Creative Capitals of St. Petersburg and Leipzig through dramatically varied music by these four influential composers.