On April 1, 2018, Radio Record, the station that built its entire identity on trance, house and just about every strain of electronic dance music Russia could stomach, launched something that made no sense next to the rest of its lineup: a 24-hour classical music channel. It was billed as a prank. Nobody ever turned it off.
A Prank Aimed Squarely at Mozart
Симфония FM arrived as an April Fools' project from Radio Record, pairing Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky under a brand people tuned into for drops and basslines, not string sections. The joke worked precisely because it broke the format so completely. A network known for pushing the newest house and dubstep edits had suddenly put on a tuxedo, and rather than quietly retire the bit once April 2 arrived, Radio Record left the channel running.
Built Inside a Dance Music Empire
The company behind the joke has been in the business of defying its own format for three decades. Radio Record began broadcasting on August 22, 1995, founded by Lyudmila Alexandrovna Reznikova, the widow of Russian composer Viktor Reznikov, according to its documented history. It became the first Russian station to switch entirely to a dance format, a decision the station credits to a vote among its own listeners rather than a programming director's call. That willingness to let the audience steer the format is part of why a classical prank could survive past its own punchline.
Fifty Stations and One Very Serious Joke
Симфония FM's survival turned out to be less of an outlier than it first looked. Since 2018, Radio Record has grown its online lineup to more than 50 distinct sub-stations, stretching from niche electronic subgenres like neurofunk and techtonik to formats that have nothing to do with dance music at all, including rock and Russian pop, per the same historical record. Симфония FM simply became the earliest and strangest entry in that expansion, a station that started as a punchline and ended up proving the model.
What Actually Plays at 4 A.M.
The channel runs its own live rotation straight from Radio Record's own player, mixing core classical repertoire from Bach, Mozart and Ravel with film scores from composers like John Williams and contemporary neoclassical pieces from Ludovico Einaudi. It broadcasts around the clock from the company's studios in Saint Petersburg, with no DJ voice-overs, no drops, no countdowns to the next festival anthem, just one composition running into the next.
Симфония FM is still, technically, a joke. Radio Record has just never bothered explaining that to the orchestra.