Conductor Samuel Friedmann is among the musicians demonstrating the continuing vitality of the pure Russian school of orchestral music-making. Born in the Soviet city of Kharkov (now Kharkiv, Ukraine) in 1940, he started out as a violinist and graduated from the Kharkov Conservatory in 1964 as a violin major. Then he switched to conducting, earning a degree in that field in 1966 from the prestigious Leningrad Conservatory. Friedmann began to ascend the ranks of the Soviet Union's regional ensembles, serving as permanent conductor of the Irkutsk Philharmonic from 1967 to 1970 a...