Realized in collaboration with M. P. Belaieff Publishing House; a subsidiary of C. F. Peters since 1971; this recording offers the opportunity to recount the fantastic story of its founder; the Russian patron of the arts Mitrofan Petrovitch Belaieff.

Born in St. Petersburg on 22 February 1836; Belaieff was guaranteed a life of luxury before he even saw the light of day. His father was a rich lumber industrialist; and Mitrofan Petrovitch inherited his immense fortune. But business alone did not satisfy this idealist who had been educated in a German Protestant school that placed great importance on music (especially chorales). He studied the piano; violin and viola (which became his instrument of preference) and joined in 1880 (at the age of 44) an amateur orchestra in St. Petersburg directed by Anatole Liadov.

This experience proved to be a revelation; a breach in the dam that had (unconsciously?) kept him sheltered from the surging wave of contemporary Russian music. Through Liadov he came into contact with the circle of musicians around Balkirev (better known as “The Five” in English); lance-head of the new nationalistic movement in music. Belaieff; who up to this point had listened only to German music; saw open a new universe of unexpected expressive dimensions which he quickly made his own.