VIDEO INTERVIEW: Ona Jarmalavičiūtė talks to American choral conductor Donald Nally, director of The Crossing, in this fascinating, illustrated, one hour programme.
VIDEO PODCAST: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about Youth Involvement in Classical Music - this specially extended illustrated feature includes contributions from Christopher Morley, Gerald Fenech, Halida Dinova, Patricia Spencer and Roderic Dunnett.
SPONSORED: Ensemble. Unjustly Neglected - In this specially extended feature, Armstrong Gibbs' re-discovered 'Passion according to St Luke' impresses Roderic Dunnett.
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Jewish-Russian pianist and chess player Mark Taimanov was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine on 7 February 1926, and the family moved to St Petersburg when he was six months old. He was introduced to music by his mother, a piano teacher. At the age of eleven, he took the part of a young violinist in the 1937 Soviet film Beethoven Concerto.
Taimanov played in a piano duo with the first of his four wives, Lyubok Bruk, and some of their recordings appeared in the Philips/Steinway series Great Pianists of the 20th Century. He also knew Shostakovich, Rostropovich and Sviatoslav Richter, but he was mainly known as a chess player.
Mark Taimanov died in St Petersburg on 28 November 2016, aged ninety.