Russia - Saint Petersburg - Winter Palace

The Winter Palace was the official residence of the Russian Emperors from 1732 to 1917. Today, the palace and its precincts form the Hermitage Museum. Situated between Palace Embankment and Palace Square, in Saint Petersburg, adjacent to the site of Peter the Great's original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and altered almost continuously between the late 1730s and 1837, when it was severely damaged by fire and immediately rebuilt. The storming of the palace in 1917, as depicted in Soviet propaganda art and Sergei Eisenstein's 1927 film October, became an iconic symbol of the Russian Revolution.

The palace was constructed on a monumental scale that was intended to reflect the might and power of Imperial Russia. From the palace, the Tsar ruled over 22,400,000 square kilometers (almost 1/6 of the Earth's landmass) and over 125 million subjects by the end of the 19th century. It was designed by many architects, most notably Bartolomeo Rastrelli, in what came to be known as the Elizabethan Baroque style. The green-and-white palace has the shape of an elongated rectangle, and its principal façade is 215 metres long and 30 m high. The Winter Palace has been calculated to contain 1,886 doors, 1,945 windows, 1,500 rooms and 117 staircases. Following a serious fire, the palace's rebuilding of 1837 left the exterior unchanged, but large parts of the interior were redesigned in a variety of tastes and styles, leading the palace to be described as a "19th-century palace inspired by a model in Rococo style".

In 1905, the Bloody Sunday massacre occurred when demonstrators marched toward the Winter Palace, but by this time the Imperial Family had chosen to live in the more secure and secluded Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, and returned to the Winter Palace only for formal and state occasions. Following the February Revolution of 1917, the palace was for a short time the seat of the Russian Provisional Government, led by Alexander Kerensky. Later that same year, the palace was stormed by a detachment of Red Army soldiers and sailors, a defining moment in the birth of the Soviet state.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Palace]
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Vasily Sergeyevich Kalinnikov (1866 –1901) was a Russian composer.
His body of work consists of two symphonies, several additional orchestral works, and numerous songs, all of them imbued with characteristics of folksong.
Kalinnikov studied at the seminary at Oryol, becoming director of the choir there at fourteen. Later he went to the Moscow Conservatory but could not afford the tuition fees. On a scholarship he went to the Moscow Philharmonic Society School, where he received bassoon and composition lessons from Alexander Ilyinsky.

In 1892, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky recommended Kalinnikov for the position of main conductor of the Maly Theatre, and later that same year to the Moscow Italian Theater. However, due to his worsening tuberculosis, Kalinnikov had to resign from his theater appointments and move to the warmer southern clime of the Crimea. He lived at Yalta for the rest of his life, and it was there that he wrote the main part of his music, including his two symphonies. In Yalta he joined two other famous tubercular patients, Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekov. Exhausted, he died of tuberculosis on 11 January 1901, just two days before his 35th birthday.

Vasily Kalinnikov's reputation was established with his First Symphony.
In Russia his First Symphony remains in the repertory, and his place in musical history is secure. On 7 November 1943, Arturo Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a rare broadcast performance of the First Symphony.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Kalinnikov]

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