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: : For a long time it was thought that Rimsky-Korsakov was the composer of the first Russian symphony in 1867. We now know this is not true. Of course, in the 19th century there were composers such as Anton Rubinstein, whose Symphony No.1 appeared in 1850, and Glinka, wh wrote an unfinished Symphony on Russian themes in 1834. However, there were Russian symphonies even before then. Recently there has been extensive research into 18th century Russian music, a fascinating and little explored area. : The second half of the 18th century in Russia saw not only the emancipation of music from the church, the establishment of secular music, but also many foreign composers invited to St Petersburg by Catherine the Great, composers such as Paisiello, Cimarosa and Galuppi. Russian composers, many of whom studied in Italy, were also appearing on the musical scene. All genres of music were popular, and Russian opera flourished alongside the French, Italian and German. The most well-known, and perhaps greatest composer of this era was Dmitri Bortnyansky (1751-1825) of Ukrainian origin, court Kapellmeister, who wrote in all genres of music, but is best known as the most extraordinary composer of Russian church music. Berlioz was among the later admirers of his music. Anyway, in 1790 Bortnyansky composed a Sinfonia Concertante which was for a time also thought to be the 'first Russian symphony'. : There were composers of foreign origin who wrote symphonies- such as the Czech-born Ernst Wanczura, whose 3 "National" Symphonies were the first published in Russia (c1786); Franz Xaver Blyma, and Joseph Kozlovsky, a Polish-born Russian composer. : Recently a Symphony by Maxim Berezovsky (1740s-1777), which was written around 1770-72, was discovered. He was previously not known to have written any symphonies, but he was the first known Russian (-Ukrainian) composer to write an Italian opera. : Of course, this era is still largely unexplored- many works by Bortnyansky, Berezovsky and other composers are still lost, but researchers continually discover something new. So this is a fascinating area of research!

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