Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018) was one of Russia's greatest conductors along with Yevgeny Mravinsky; Kirill Kondrashin and Yevgeny Svetlanov. Like them; he was a supreme interpreter of his country's leading composers -notably Prokofiev; Shostakovich; and Tchaikovsky - but he was also more versatile and always in search of new challenges far beyond Russian and Soviet repertoire; from Benjamin Britten to Carl Nielsen and much more.