State Russian concert Orchestra St.-Petersburg

Russian Folk Classic Orchestra is a classical orchestra of Russian Folk Instruments, as far as its cast is concerned, an ensemble of 32 soloists-virtuosi, mainly, the graduates of the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire.
This is the only body of such kind in  the city giving concerts and keeping up the traditions of the famous V.V. Andreyev orchestra in the period of its intensive concert activities till 1941.
The Russian concert orchestra was organized in 1991.
All the instruments of a traditional national Russian orchestra established in Petersburg at the end of the XIX century are represented in it: balalaikas, domras of all kinds — from «piccolo» to «contrabass», psalteries, accordions, pipes, horns, different percussion instruments and other folk ones.
The orchestra possesses its own manner of performance, which is typical of «Petersburg» strictness, reserve and greatness of tone with no snow-off or rudeness. Concerning its style of performing concerts, concerning its attitude towards the national music, this is an academic body of philarmonic type, which is manifested in the musicians' clothes — tail-coats and concert dresses. The programmes of RCO's performances arc quite various. These are concert shows with soloists-instrumentalists as well as outstanding masters of Russian vocal school participating, who are attracted by extreme softness of sounding and by warmth of timbre of this unique body. This orchestra has close artistic ties with the soloists of the Mariinsky opera, the leading singers of many theatres of the country (Z.Sotkilava, B.Minzhilkiyev, B.Shtokolov, E.Gorokhovskaya, V.Noreika and others).
In the repertoire of this body there are concert treatment of folk melodies, the arrangement of Russian and Western classical music, the works of modern authors and original compositions created by composers specially for the RCO.
The Russian concert orchestra of Saint Petersburg has some audiorecording of its repertoire as well as some videocassettes.

Wladimir Pavlovich Popov (born in 1945) is the organizer of the orchestra, its artistic director and conductor possessing great experience in work on the concert stage. He graduated from the Leningrad and Novosibirsk conservatoires. For many years he was engaged in teaching, for more than 7 years he was an artistic director of the Russian folk orchestra named after Andreyev. In the artistic biography of the conductor there arc hundreds of concerts — both in his own country and abroad, cooperation with outstanding singers of modem time, gram recording, performances together with symphonic orchestras and work in the music theatre.
Popov sees his main task in active propaganda, of Russian music performing, he seeks to demonstrate all the beauty of the orchestra's sounding, to attract attention to national instruments, to convey to the listeners all the profundity and diversity of Russian music by means of great professionalism of performance.