From Wikipedia: The Moscow Chamber Orchestra is a Chamber Orchestra based in Moscow, Russia, and assigned to the Moscow Philharmonia, a State run enterprise under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture. Rudolf Barshai (Russian: Рудольф Борисович Баршай, September 28, 1924 – November 2, 2010) was a virtuoso viola player and a founding member of the Borodin Quartet. He left the Quartet to pursue his conducting ambitions. Barshai assembled young, talented musicians and soon the first Chamber Orchestra in the former USSR had their inaugural concert in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on April 2, 1956. The Orchestra became the most traveled Classical Music ensemble in the former Soviet Union and toured the world including Eastern Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan and South America. Many composers dedicated their compositions to the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, such as Dmitry Shostakovich, Revol Bunin, Mieczysław Weinberg, Boris Tchaikovsky and others. The Orchestra performed many world premiers of contemporary compositions, such as Dmitry Shostakovich's Symphony No.14, in Leningrad, on September 29, 1969. World famous musicians performed and recorded with the Orchestra: Yehudi Menuhin, Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Emil Gilels, Leonid Kogan, Malcolm Frager, to name a few. Following Barshai’s emigration to the West in 1977, Igor Semyonovich Bezrodny (Russian: Игорь Семёнович Безродный) was appointed the new conductor and an artistic director of the Orchestra. He led the Orchestra until 1981. For the next 10 years the Moscow Chamber Orchestra was led first by Victor Tretiakov then Andrei Korsakov. In 1991 Constantin Orbelian was appointed conductor. He was succeeded by Alexei Utkin (Russian: Алексей Уткин), in 2010. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Moscow+Chamber+Orchestra">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.