30 April 2016

A Russian tour heralding the Moscow Easter Festival began today in Tula, Oryol and Kursk

Today, 29 April, saw the start of a tour of Russia by the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev. In one day the musicians will be performing in Tula, Oryol and Kursk. Tomorrow, 30 April, there will be a concert in Smolensk, then the Mariinsky Orchestra will travel to Briansk, where it will appear under the baton of young conductor Zaurbek Gugkaev, while Valery Gergiev will leave for Moscow where he will appear in a concert opening the I International Young Pianists’ Grand Piano Competition.

On Russian Orthodox Easter Day (1 May) the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will first appear in Vladimir and subsequently at the Great Hall of the Conservatoire in Moscow, where at 20:00 there will be the grand opening of the XV Moscow Easter Festival. The concert programme includes highlights of the music from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No 3 with soloist Daniil Trifonov, Three Wondersfrom Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.

As per tradition, the musicians will travel by the specially chartered Moscow Easter Festival train. The train has fourteen waggons – eight for musicians, a staff waggon, a waggon for journalists, two restaurant-cars, a shower car and a waggon for the instruments.

“This year we are dedicating the festival to the 125th anniversary of Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev’s birth. The Mariinsky Theatre today is in many ways the theatre of Prokofiev. Our company’s wonderful performers, with their passionate determination and enviable constancy as well as with tremendous focus of their strengths, willpower and energy, never fail to reveal this great composer literally throughout the music world – from Tokyo or Beijing to New York or San Francisco, from Chile or Cuba to Finland. Sergei Prokofiev with his inherent laconic qualities and frequent terseness, has shown us today, one hundred and twenty-five years after his birth, that he was not writing transient, boring – and that is worst of all – ‘serial’ works. He was obsessed with the idea of creating something truly interesting, never ‘rubber-stamping’ his compositions. Prokofiev categorically refused to be a highly productive composer because he had discovered once and for all time what his musical language meant. He and his music formed part of an improbable and highly unpredictable movement in world terms,” says Valery Gergiev.

The XV Moscow Easter Festival runs from 1 to 17 May 2016 with the support of the Moscow City Government, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation and with the blessing of His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. The tempo of the festival, in line with tradition, will be set by the Mariinsky Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev as well as outstanding contemporary musicians, prize-winners at the Tchaikovsky Competition and the finest instrumental and choral ensembles from across the globe.

Performances by the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev begin on 29 April and will last nineteen days in twenty Russian cities – Tula, Oryol, Kursk, Smolensk, Vladimir, Moscow, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Votkinsk, Izhevsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, Krasnodar, Vladikavkaz, Astrakhan and Saransk.

The choral programme opens on 2 May at the Hall of Church Cathedrals of the Church of Christ the Saviour with a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’ cantataAlexander Nevsky and cantata for mixed chorus and symphony orchestra Flourish, Mighty Land. Countries represented in the programme include Russia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Serbia, Armenia, Greece and Sweden. The festival will see performances by twenty choral ensembles: the State Academic Russian Sveshnikov Chorus (Moscow), the State Academic Russian Yurlov Cappella (Moscow), the Patriarchal Chorus of the Church of Christ the Saviour (Moscow), the Vesnyanka concert chorus (Moscow), the Russian Rhapsody ensemble of soloists (Moscow), the Overcome chamber chorus of the rehabilitation centre for people with limited abilities (Moscow), the Mariinsky Chorus (St Petersburg), the Optina-Pustyn male chorus (St Petersburg), the Vladimir Boys and Young Men’s Choral Cappella (Vladimir), the Russian Partes chamber chorus (Tver), the Symbol of Faith men’s chamber chorus (Voronezh), the Chorus of the First Belgrade Choral Society (Belgrade, Serbia), the Zero8 male chorus (Stockholm, Sweden), the Dragostin Folk National (Sofia, Bulgaria), the Geghard Convent Chorus (Yerevan, Armenia), Rosarte children’s chorus (Athens, Greece), the Mtskheta ensemble (Tbilisi, Georgia) and the Byzantine chorus Thessalonikis Ymnodoi (Salonika, Greece), the North Russian Folk Chorus (Arkhangelsk) and the Pomorskiekruzhaniya vocal ensemble (Arkhangelsk). The concert programmes will take place in Moscow, the Moscow Region (Lorolyov, Balashikha, Mytishchakh, Khimki, Dmitrov, Serpukhov, Istra, Zaraisk, Yegorevsk and Kolomna), Tver, Staritsa, Tula, Murom, Alexandrov, Kaluga, Ivanovka and Arkhangelsk.

The chamber programme will encompass Moscow, Murmansk, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk on Amur, Belgorod, Tolyatti, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Kostroma and Yaroslavl. Soloists of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers and the academy’s Artistic Director Larisa Gergieva will be presenting special programmes marking the Prokofiev anniversary. The programme will also feature the Russian-German Youth Academy.

The bell-ringing programme will take place at twenty-six churches in Moscow, St Petersburg, Ramenskoye, Sergiev Posad, Istra, Zvenigorod and Rzhev. The open-to-all bell-ringing music concerts will be performed in historic and contemporary belfries in Moscow and the Moscow Region, including on Red Square, Taganka, the Danilov Monastery, Sokolniki, the Kolomenskoe Estate Museum, the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery in Zvenigorod and the New Jerusalem Monastery in Istra. This year the number of programme participants has increased: there will be forty bell-ringers from St Petersburg, Vologda, Velinky Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, Yekaterinburg, Omsk, Tyumen, Petrozavodsk, Nyandoma, Samara and Rzhev, as well as Minsk and Kalinkovich (Belarus), Riga (Latvia), Pavlograd and Alchevsk (Ukraine) and Bad Laasphe (Germany).

The XV Festival’s charitable concerts will be held at officers’ houses, children’s homes, residential schools and residences for the disabled and veterans. On 9 May on Victory Day at Poklonnaya Hill there will be the traditional free concert with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev.