The Mariinsky at the Turku Music Festival

Founded by the Turku Society of Music in 1960, Finland’s longest currently running music festival opens on 5 August this year. The festival’s organisers have given the honour of opening the festival programme to the Mariinsky Opera and Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev.

The playbill for the concert that opens the festival consists of works by major figures in Russian and Finnish music. The evening begins with a performance of Jean Sibelius’ Swan of Tuonela, one of the composer’s most popular pieces of symphony music which he based on the ancient Finnish epos The Kalevala. There will then be a rendition of Rodion Shchedrin’s Piano Concerto No 4 (Sharp Keys), the extremely demanding solo to be performed by internationally acclaimed pianist Olli Mustonen. The evening will conclude with a masterpiece that, when conducted by Valery Gergiev, is incredibly deep and expressive – Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Sixth Symphony.

The theme of the next day of the festival is the anniversary of the births of Verdi and Wagner, events being celebrated this year by every major music organisation. At this concert the Mariinsky Theatre will be presenting some of the finest music by these two operatic geniuses, to be performed by outstanding Mariinsky Opera soloists who have won international acclaim – Yevgeny Nikitin (bass-baritone), Alexei Markov (baritone) and Larisa Gogolevskaya (soprano). The programme for the evening includes arias and scenes from the operas Macbeth, Don Carlo, Otello, Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser as well as symphonic highlights from Verdi and Wagner’s music.