About
The Northern Flowers label (produced and packaged to the highest standards) is now around 150 releases, and now contains so many ‘world premiere recordings’ and little-known composers that it’s influence for collectors of Russian music is so much greater.
(Until 2016 it had not been fully or regularly available in most territories, but this has been changing ever since through the new worldwide agreement with ALTO UK)
The label is centred on unissued recordings from the St. Petersburg (‘Leningrad’) studios, the old Russian capital, and on Composers, friends and associates of there, including some of the most famous ones, such as Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Stravinsky etc.
Central themes and editions of the catalogue include famous complete editions of the Chamber Music of Taneyev and of Myaskovsky’s String Quartets, and of course of the major series developed more recently: ‘War-Time Music’ (18 volumes so far, with fascinating Composers such as Knipper, Weinberg, Mossolov, Popov, Kochurov, Polovinkin, Glière, Sherbakov and others. That series connects to the Siege of Leningrad (1941-5) and features archive photography from then, with many of the Composers inspired to write works then for ‘solidarity and patriotic’ reasons to encourage their fellow citizens.
Some of the top sellers have been new recordings by top Russian cellist Marina Tarasova, including Weinberg’s cello music, Davydov, etc with Tcherepnin to come soon !
Further Composers within different series on the Label include Slonimsky, Petrov, Falik, Salmanov, Sviridov and many more discoveries. The Label today also works alongside Russian ‘Composer Foundations’ such as those of Anatoly Lyadov, Boris Tchaikovsky and of course Boris Tishchenko, whose many volumes of epic Symphonies have been released, as well as his other works, very often as exclusive titles to us.
“We would like to see our “Northern Flowers” project as belonging to the same line of cultural heritage as the original and influential Russian literary magazine of the same name, (edited by Delwig, Pushkin, and Bryussov and with poems often set to music eg by Glinka), and we do hope that it will continue the best artistic traditions of this Northern capital.” (Yuri Serov). [Yuri Serov is the pianist, music producer/label founder/Manager of St. Petersburg Philharmonic and son of the great Conductor Eduard Serov – who sadly died in September 2016.]