The title of Music@Menlo’s 2016 festival season, Russian Reflections, captures a variety
of perspectives on this season’s programming. Russia’s history is vividly reflected in its
music. Russian Reflections also refers to the parallels between Russian musical works
and their Western European counterparts. And finally, Russia’s great artists, across
disciplines, have contributed some of the canon’s most compelling works of selfreflection—
from Tolstoy’s War and Peace to Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and
from Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence to Shostakovich’s Piano Trio no. 2. Such works
represent these artists’ lucid and often poignant looks at themselves as a people and a
nation. By juxtaposing Russian masterworks with those of the West, as with the pairing
of quintets by Sergei Taneyev and Johannes Brahms on Disc 6, we discover that the very
elements that distinguish Russian music—passion, romance, elegance, and more—are
in fact universally resonant themes. Through each disc of Music@Menlo LIVE’s 2016
edition, these and other perspectives cast Russia’s musical identity in sharp relief, while
also revealing an essential character that transcends any cultural divide.

Disc 8 brings together a collection of souvenirs—musical remembrances of things
past, faraway, and dear—all essential characteristics of the Russian musical spirit.
Samuel Barber’s Souvenirs are delectable reminiscences of early twentieth-century
New York City. Shostakovich’s Spanish Songs take listeners half a world away but cast
an equally heartfelt gaze upon the object of their nostalgia. This collection comes to
a thrilling close with Tchaikovsky’s exhilarating Souvenir de Florence, written after the
composer spent three months in the birthplace of the Renaissance.