Moscow State Symphony Orchestra
Conductor Ivan Rudin

Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is one of the best and most important novels in the world. The author considered it a poem that proves that an individual life and the history of a country are inseparable. So, the novel’s style was an innovative mixture of characters’ stories and the author’s meditations on the history, and that well-known problem of a role of an individual in history. Tolstoy was sure that the only way a person can influence the course of history is not to interfere in it, like Kutuzov does.

Is it possible to put this whole bunch of ideas and characters on stage? The creators of the Symphoshow “War and Peace” tried and did it, admitting, though, that the task was really Herculian. They revised and “re-thought” the text paying special attention to some characters’ stories, and added music of Bach, Mozart, Strauss, Wagner, Tchikovsky, and even Schnittke, to name a few. So, the rendition is quite unusual, though the artists claim that the symphonic principle works good for theatre too. 

Darya Moroz, Anatoly Beliy, and Sergey Burunov, popular Russian actors, are responsible for the narrative. The subtle fusion of great literature and great music makes a listener think of some omnipresent problems, aa well as Tolstoy’s maximas such as “A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”