Big Children's Choir

The V. S. Popov Big Children's Choir of Russia Today Media (Russian: Большой Детский Хор имени В. С. Попова (БДХ), romanized: Bolshoi Detskiy Khor imeni V. S. Popova (BDKh)) is one of the most popular children's choirs from the former USSR and Russia. It is affiliated with the Rossiya Segodnya agency.

History

The choir was founded in 1970 and is based in Moscow. Its founding chief conductor was professor Victor Sergeevich Popov (1934–2008), People's Artist of the USSR. The choir, originally known as Big Children's Choir of the USSR All-Union National Radio Service and USSR Central Television Networks (Russian: Большой детский хор Всесоюзного радио и Центрального телевидения) honoured its founder by assuming his name in 2008.

The choir has a very large repertoire made of thousands of different musical compositions, including short songs, cantatas, classical music, and Soviet and Russian patriotic songs and folk music. The choir had (and still has) the widest popularity in Soviet and post-Soviet society because of its repertoire for children including songs from children and teenage films, and even sang with well-known singers and starred in its own television programs and specials in the 1980s.

The choir's collection contains compositions written by composers such as Mikhail Glinka, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Johann Sebastian Bach, Aleksandra Pakhmutova, Vladimir Shainsky, Eugeny Krylatov, Jury Chichkov etc.

Popular alumni of the BCC

• Sergey Paramonov
• Dmitry Golov
• Oleg Kasyanov
• Vitaliy Nikolaev
• Tatyana Melekhina
• Margarita Suhankina
• Olga Korolkova
• Dmitry Galikhin
• Dmitry Mashnin
• Konstantin Dyukin
• Yuri Korobko
• Sergey Kuzyurin
• Alexey Proshkin
• Alexey Stopkin
• Konstantin Kirillov
• Svetlana Kuleshova

External links

• Big Children's Choir discography at Discogs
• BBC Documentary "The Songs of Comrade Time"
• "What became of the Soviet Union's child stars?" BBC World Service
• Club of members and fans of Big Children's Choir
• Unofficial site
• Video channel