Ensemble "Soloists of Catherine the Great"
Andrey Reshetin (violin)
Fatima Lafisheva (violin)
Andrey Penyugin (viola)
Alexander Listratov (cello)
Ensemble «Soloists of Catherine the Great» (Saint-Petersburg) is a unique project of the Foundation for the Revival of Early Music aimed at bringing to light and restoring to its legitimate place Russia’s 18th century musical legacy. The line-up of the ensemble is designed for the performance of the chamber music (duos, trios, quartets and quintets); on the other hand, it is the basis of the Catherine the Great Orchestra – the first professional baroque orchestra in Russia, founded in 2001. The Soloists of Catherine the Great use historical instruments and practice authentic performance style. In collaboration with a number of leading experts and musi-cologists, the musicians of the ensemble have undertaken research in the Russian archives in order to bring to light and present the previously forgotten masterpieces of music by such composers of the Russian Court as Khandoshkin, Jarnovich, Tietz, Facius and others. The Soloists of Catherine the Great are also very interested in the music, which was performed in the Russian noble estates in the 18th and early 19th centuries and which has kept a special atmosphere of this vanished world.
Artistic director of the ensemble, Andrey Reshetin, is one of the first Russian musicians to have ex-plored authentic, or historically informed, performance. Having graduated first from the St Peters-burg College of Music then from the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire, where he studied under Aaron Knaifel, Reshetin was formed by the St Petersburg philosopher and artist AXL and took his first steps in authentic performance under the guidance of Felix Ravdonikas, an academic and in-strument maker, and the founding father of authentic performance in Russia. Andrey subsequently studied baroque violin with Maria Leonhardt. From 1987 to 1992, Andrey was violinist with the legendary Russian rock band “Aquarium”, and from 1990 to 2003 first violin of the celebrated Rus-sian baroque ensemble «Musica Petropolitana». In 1993 as a musician of Musica Petropolitana, Andrey won first prize at the Van Vassenaer competition in Amsterdam. Andrey has performed both as soloist and ensemble musician at many leading festivals, such as Utrecht Oude Muziek Fes-tival, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Musikfestspeile at Sanssouci, the music festivals of York, Beverly, Reygensburg and many others. His concerts have been recorded by WDR3, NDR3, BBC3, Radio Klara (Belgium) and other radio stations in Russia, France, Germany and the Nether-lands. He has recorded discs for Opus 111, Klara, and WDR. In 1998 together with Elizabeth White, Director of the British Council in St Petersburg and Marc de Mauny, British Council Arts Officer, he set up the St Petersburg International Earlymusic Festival, which has since become the leading festival of its kind in Russia and Eastern Europe.