He assembled young, talented musicians and soon the first Chamber Orchestra in the former USSR had its inaugural concert in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on April 2, 1956.
[1] The Moscow Chamber Orchestra became the most traveled classical music ensemble in the former Soviet Union and toured the world from Eastern Europe to Canada and the United States and from Japan to South America.
[2] Many composers dedicated their compositions to the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Revol Bunin, Mieczysław Weinberg, Boris Tchaikovsky and many others.
[1] World-famous musicians performed and recorded with the Orchestra: Yehudi Menuhin, Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Emil Gilels, Leonid Kogan, Malcolm Frager, to name a few.
Following Barshai’s emigration to the West in 1977, Igor Semyonovich Bezrodny (Russian: Игорь Семёнович Безродный) was appointed a new conductor and an artistic director of the Orchestra.