The Nose Listed As Best in Classics in 2009

The Washington Post has released recently its annual list of the best and worst recordings in classic music in 2009. My congratulations to all listed and special ones to the Mariinsky theatre, which I mentioned a few times in my posts here.

The label of this theatre was put in the list, which can be seen here, number 3. Opera “Nose” by Dmitri  Shostakovich, a St. Petersburg-born great composer.

What’s important is not only the fact that Mariinsky is located in St. Petersburg and that Shostakovich lived here . It should be noted opera “Nose ” recorded by Mariinsky’s musicians and chorus directed by Valery Gergiev is about St. Petersburg. This is a story written by a world-known Russian-Ukranian writer Nikolai Gogol in XIXth century about a major who woke one day and found it out that his nose had … gone. After this he discovered his own nose living its own life. That is a rather funny and satirical story highlighting the practicalities in the city of that times. Those days St. Petersburg was the capital of the Russian Empire.

The recording was made in the summer 2008 at the Concert Hall of Mariinsky.

The site of the theatre notes that it should be remembered that The Nose was also nominated for an American Grammy Academy Award as best opera recording and as best album of classical music.

And you must be willing to ask me what is that strange thing in the picture. Well, it is one of the funniest monuments in the city, it’s a monument to this Nose which escaped from the major!

You can find it here. In 2002, it was stolen, and as locals joked he had  just gone for a walk as it used to do in the Gogol’s story But in 2003 it was returned to its right place.