Last Updated on February 22, 2023 by Hannah Henderson
Hear about some of St Petersburg’s many musical connections, with potted biographies of composers from Glinka, often known as the father of Russian music, to Shostakovich, via, of course, Tchaikovsky. And not forgetting Rubinstein, whose Russian Musical Society did so much to put St Petersburg on the musical map, or Stravinsky, whose ‘Rite of Spring’ delighted and outraged audiences in equal measure. Find out too about some of the city’s best-known musical and theatrical venues, from the jewel-like little theatres built for the Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine the Great to the ever-popular Mariinsky and the two Shostakovich Philarmonia Halls. Learn which museums and cemeteries have most to tell you about the city’s musical heritage.
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More information about St Petersburg coming soon.
Listen to the POdcast
Links & Reading
Useful websites for tourists
St Petersburg City Tourist Information Bureau
St Petersburg.Com (Tourist Information)
2 guidebooks to St Petersburg
Eyewitness Travel Guide to St Petersburg
Lonely Planet Guide to St Petersburg
Travel Book
Among the Russians by Colin Thubron
History
Russian History, a Very Short Introduction by Geoffrey Hosking
The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport
Biography
Peter the Great by Lindsey Hughes
Peter the Great by Derek Wilson
Catherine the Great by Simon Dixon
Catherine the Great by Robert K Massie
Rasputin by Frances Welch
Four Sisters by Helen Rappaport (the 4 daughters of Czar Nicholas II)
The Diary of Lena Mukhina (A diary of the Siege of Leningrad)
Art and Culture
A Short Life of Pushkin by Robert Chandler
Nijinsky by Lucy Moore
Rudolf Nuryev The Life by Julie Kavanagh
Anna of all the Russias The Life of Anna Akhmatova by Elaine Feinstein
Anthologies
St Petersburg A Traveller’s Companion by Laurence Kelly
City Pick St Petersburg edited by Heather Reyes
Literary St Petersburg by Elaine Blair
Novels set in St Petersburg
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Siege by Helen Dunmore
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov
