Timur Karimovich Mynbaev has been the principal conductor and artistic director of the Russian Academy of Music Chamber Orchestra since 2000, and the principal conductor of the Russian Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra since 1997. He was born in 1943, and graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory. He triumphed in the 1976 USSR Conductors' Competition and in 1990 in the International Conductors' Competition, and has been declared an Honoured Artist of Kazakhstan. He has conducted at the Bolshoy and Kirov (Marïinsky) Theatres, and has performed with many orchestras, including the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Radio Symphony, Volgograd Symphony, Moscow Philharmonic, and Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Riga and Vilnius Philharmonic Orchestras. He has toured in Finland, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, participated in international festivals, including the Helsinki Summer, Spring in Lugano, and Moscow Autumn. His many recordings include performances of works of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Webern, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Stravinsky and Shostakovich, as well as the contemporary composers Gubaidulina, Part, Denisov, Slonimsky, Silvestrov, Volkonsky and Xenakis. Timur Mynbaev is a remarkable composer. Among his works are the ballet Fresco, two symphonies, an opera, and numerous symphonic, chamber and choral works. He is also the author of a number of musicological publications and is a Professor of the Russian Academy of Music (the Gnesin Academy) in Moscow.

Boris Tchaikovsky had his musical training at the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Shostakovich, Myaskovsky and Shebalin. He profited from the changes in Russia in the 1960s, developing his own particularly Russian musical language, rather than turning, like some of his contemporaries, to the latest experimental trends of the West.

Music
Tchaikovsky was a prolific composer, his works including four symphonies, four instrumental concertos, six string quartets, a variety of chamber and orchestral music for various ensembles, piano and vocal music, and a quantity of music for the cinema. The suites The Murmuring Forest and After the Ball are based on music written for radio plays.