Gennady Rozhdestvensky obituary
(The Guardian Russia)

Inspirational Russian maestro who served as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the late 1970sThe maverick Russian conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who has died aged 87, managed to maintain throughout his professional life an astonishing balancing act between apparent chaos and an underlying grasp of form. There was always an element of risk in his performances but when they worked, the results could be extraordinary. Even had he not been an inspirational conductor, he would still have been remembered for championing the oddball scores of Russian and international music in difficult times.Nothing sums up his individual approach to the Russian arts more than his choice as his favourite work of Shostakovich´s opera The Nose, which he single-handedly brought back to life from obscurity in the early 1970s, shortly before the composer´s death. Continue reading...