Profil are proud to present this stunning new disc featuring Kyrill Kondrashin's last concert with the Dresden Staatskapelle. It includes the world première recording of Boris Tchaikovsky’s Variations for Orchestra.

When he conducted the Staatskapelle, Kondrashin’s programmes frequently featured works by his twentieth-century Russian ‘comrades’ Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky and above all Shostakovich, with whom he was on intimate terms and whose Symphonies nos. 4, 12 and 13 he had premiered in the Soviet Union.

It is surely significant that in 1963 Kondrashin chose the Dresden Staatskapelle to present the first performance outside the Soviet Union of Shostakovich's long-shelved Fourth Symphony - a historical concert event which was also recorded by the East German broadcasting services (PH06023), and received a five star review from BBC Music Magazine in November 2006.

Shostakovich's Fifteenth Symphony was on the programme of the last Staatskapelle concert Kondrashin conducted on January 23, 1974. It was one of the series of special concerts that made up the jubilee season of 1973/74, when the Staatskapelle, one of the oldest orchestras in the world with a tradition stretching back to 1548, celebrated the 425th year of its existence.