Earlier this month Linda and I set out on a great journey, three thousand miles down the River Volga from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg to a Khazak yurt near Astrakhan and the Caspian Sea, then on the River Don to the Cossack towns of Rostov and Azov.

Bunker

On the way we saw some unforgettable sights, splendid Orthodox cathedrals, the magnificent Kul Sharif mosque in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, Stalin's secret bunker, forty metres below the city of Samara and, most poignant of all, the relics and memorials of the battle of Stalingrad.

Russian composers

This week's programme seeks to record some of those impressions and to honour the achievements of Russian composers, some of them working in an atmosphere of fear and the imminent danger of arrest and exile or worse.

31st October:

1. The Comedians Galop
Kabalevsky arr Frank Wright
Black Dyke

2. Russlan & Ludmilla
Glinka arr. Hargreaves
Black Dyke

3. Danses Polovtsienne
Borodin arr. Huckridge
Matthews Norfolk Brass

4. A Night on a Bare Mountain
Mussorgsky arr. Huckridge
Yorkshire Imps

5. Kaleidoscope
Rimsky-Korsakov arr. Bowen
Enfield S.A. Band

6. Montagues & Capulets
Prokofiev arr. Giske
Eikanger Bjorsvik

7. Romance from The Gadfly
Shostakovich arr. Broadbent
Leyland DAF

8. 18th Variation on a Theme of Paganini
Rachmaninov arr. Snell
BNFL

9. Kalinka
Trad arr. Ray Woodfield
Ancient Order of Foresters

10. Sleeping Beauty Waltz
Tchaikovsky arr. Roy Newsome
Sun Life