Slava vo vyshnikh Bogu (Glory to God in the Highest!). Rakhmaninov/choir of Aleksandr Govorov

Sergei Rakhmaninov’s setting of “Glory to God in the Highest” from the Utrenye (“Morning (Service)”/Matins). Sung by the choir of Aleksandr Govorov against a background of religious art by Mikhail Nesterov. Incidentally, Rakhmaninov and Nesterov were contemporaries, and active in the fine arts at the same time. Ergo, truly “a marriage made in Heaven”.

Winter in Canada. Mireille Matthieu

Sung in German by a French singer against a backdrop of Russian paintings by Nikolai Sverchkov… what a slumgullion! It works!

Pyesn o Kozaki Dovatorom (Song about Dovator’s Cossacks). Red Army Chorus

Major General Lev Mikhailovich Dovator was one of the heroes of the Second Great Patriotic War. He led daring cavalry raids into the Fascist rear areas, and he led from the front, not from a safe bunker or dacha. Lev Mikhailovich never asked his men to do what he would not. In December 1941, he was killed whilst on a personal reconnaissance of the front lines. Truly, this man was a “Hero of the Soviet Union”, and deserves to be remembered with honour and respect.

Valery Badakva. Fetching Water from the Spring. 2004

Fetching Water from the Spring (Valery Badakva, 2004)

Another aspect of the work of the neo-Impressionist Valery Badakva.

Yevgeny Burmashkin. Quiet. 2006

Quiet (Yevgeny Burmashkin, 2006)

Mr Burmashkin specialises in “mood landscapes” in the style of the great Peredvizhniki artist Isaak Levitan. The title says it all.