20 April to 9 May 2014 will see an eagerly anticipated event in Russia’s cultural life – the XIII Moscow Easter Festival. The grand opening of the music forum at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire will be preceded by a series of pre-festival concerts in Russia’s regions beginning on 15 April.
The XIII Moscow Easter Festival is being run with the support of the Moscow City Government, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation.
In this year of culture, the Moscow Easter Festival will once again confirm its enviable status as a music event of international importance with its record-breaking geography and incredibly rich programmes.
To mark one hundred and seventy-five years since the birth of the great Russian composer Modest Petrovich Musorgsky, a significant proportion of his works will be performed both in Moscow and in Russia’s regions. Also to be performed will be works by Musorgsky’s contemporary – the German genius Johannes Brahms. The festival will see performances of all of his symphonies and all of his instrumental concerti.
And both the Moscow and regional programmes of the XIII festival will be given a special dazzle thanks to stars including the virtuosi pianists Denis Matsuev and Nelson Freire, the outstanding violinist Pinchas Zukerman and the delightful cellist Amanda Forsyth, as well as such young soloists as cellists Alexander Ramm and Anastasia Kobekina, pianists Miroslav Kultyshev, Vladimir Petrov, Sergei Redkin and Daniil Kharitonov, violinists Alena Baeva, Ivan Pochekin and Pavel Milyukov in addition to prize-winners at the XIV Tchaikovsky Competition – pianists Daniil Trifonov (recipient of the Grand Prix) and Seong Jin Cho (recipient of the 3rd prize).
Commemorating one century since the outbreak of World War I, the festival’s programmes will feature ensembles of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for the first time, with some of the concerts taking place at regional Officers’ Houses, military bases, the Alexandrovsky Concert Hall and the Central Academic Theatre of the Russian Army.
The festival’s key elements remain unaltered – charity, education, enlightenment and patriotism.
As part of the charitable element of the XIII Moscow Easter Festival there will be dozens of concerts of symphony, choral and chamber music in Moscow and the Russian regions, a concert for veterans of World War II on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow on Victory Day and a completely free bell-ringing music programme. With the support of friends and partners of the Moscow Easter Festival as well as the Valery Gergiev Charitable Foundation a significant proportion of the tickets for symphony and choral music performances will be purchased and donated to social institutions. Additionally, many tickets for concerts in the symphony programme for Russia’s regions will be distributed free of charge to veterans, students, young people, members of the armed forces, cadets and socially vulnerable members of society.
SYMPHONY MUSIC PROGRAMME
For the first time, the tour route of the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will encompass the entire nation – from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, covering some thirty thousand kilometres!
Pre-festival performances begin on 15 April in Kaliningrad, the capital of the Amber Region.
On 20 April, Easter Day, the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev will open the XIII Moscow Easter Festival with a concert at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire.
Since its foundation, the festival has become not only an outstanding cultural phenomenon, but also a voice of support addressing all the troubles that Russia and the world face today. This year, concerts of the Moscow Easter Festival will take place in the Far East, which suffered a devastating flood, and in Volgograd in memory of the victims of the terrorist attacks there in December.
In line with tradition, on 9 May the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will be performing for veterans of World War II and an audience of several thousand on Poklonnaya Hill.
The final evening of the XIII Moscow Easter Festival will provide a suitable finale to this record-breaking music marathon – on 9 May at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, dazzling Mariinsky Theatre soloists Anna Netrebko, Ekaterina Semenchuk and Alexei Markov will be appearing in a concert performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il trovatore.
THE SONOROUS VOICE OF THE MOSCOW EASTER FESTIVAL
In September 2012 at a meeting of the Council of Arts and Culture of the Russian President, Valery Gergiev proposed re-establishing the All-Russian Choral Society. In early 2013 the society was founded and Gergiev was unanimously elected its Chairman. In spring 2013 during the XII Moscow Easter Festival every town that the music forum visited hosted performances by children’s choruses. During autumn throughout Russia’s eighty-three regions there were auditions for the Children’s Chorus of Russia. On 8 January 2014 under the baton of the maestro the thousand-member ensemble performed to great acclaim at the new stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, while on 23 February it took part in a truly historic event – the closing ceremony of the Sochi Olympic Games. The Olympic Games presented the children to the entire world, and many of them will be taking part in the XIII Moscow Easter Festival.
CHORAL PROGRAMME
The choral programme of the XIII festival will present audiences with the finest ensembles of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Lithuania, Finland, the Czech Republic, Greece, Slovakia and Germany. Among them are the Mariinsky Chorus, the Prague Philharmonic Children’s Chorus, the Stretensky Monastery Choir, the Minsk Festival Chorus of the St Elizabeth Convent, the Tapiola children’s chorus from Finland, the Hover Youth Choir from Yerevan and dozens of other internationally acclaimed ensembles.
Like last year, in drawing up the choral programme particular attention was focussed on the participation of children’s choruses. There will be performances by the Tölzer Knabenchor (Bavaria, Germany), the Mdzlevari children’s chorus (Tbilisi, Georgia) and the Bratislava Boys’ Chorus (Bratislava, Slovakia) as well as dozens of Russian choral ensembles.
The grand opening of the programme will take place on 21 April at the Hall of Cathedral Churches of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The concert will feature the Athos choir Fessalonikis Imnodi (Precentor – Ioannis Liakos), the Kiev chamber chorus (Artistic Director and Conductor – Nikolai Gobdych) and the Mariinsky Chorus (Artistic Director and Principal Conductor – Andrei Petrenko).
On 29 April at the Alexandrovsky Concert Hall there will be a free concert by the Alexandrov Academic Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army, while on 1 May the Northern Russian Folk Chorus (Artistic Director – Svetlana Ignatieva) will be performing at the Central Academic Theatre of the Russian Army.
Many of the concerts of choral music will take place at churches in Moscow and surrounding regions, where all who wish will have the opportunity to discover great works of Russian choral music and, later, to hear bell-ringing by expert campanologists.
There will be charity choral concerts for both children and adults in children’s homes, internat schools, homes for the disabled, veterans’ retirement homes and other social institutions in Moscow, Korolyov, Balashikha, Ivanteyevka, Mytischi and Khimki.
In line with tradition, together with the charitable foundation The Church and Culture there will be a Children’s Easter Celebration. Under the aegis of the Moscow Easter Festival the V Children’s Easter Festival Singing Russia will take place at the Kolomenskoe Estate and Park.
CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMME
During the festival’s chamber music programme, leading soloists of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Singers will present Hits of Russian and Western European Opera Music, Romances and Songs. The performances will take place in Moscow, Kemerovo, Barnaul, Tomsk, Surgut, Khanty-Mansiysk, Naro-Fominsk and Sergiev Posad. The programme director and concert mistress is Larisa Gergieva, Artistic Director of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Singers.
Larisa Gergieva will also be giving a series of master-classes and open-to-all rehearsals for singers and teachers in Moscow (the Theatre and Concert Hall of the Faculty of Arts of the Lomonosov Moscow State University) and other towns on the festival’s chamber music tour schedule.
The Mariinsky Academy of Young Singers, founded in 1998, has emerged to take the status of a new centre of post-graduate training for young performers – a binding link between the conservatoire and the theatre on one hand and, on the other, a perfect analogy to trainee groups at the world’s other great opera houses. The academy offers its students unique study conditions: lessons with the finest teachers, participation in master-classes by acclaimed singers and, of course, performances. Over the one and a half decades since its inception, the academy has trained several generations of young singers. And each year it is joined by talented performers from throughout Russia, the CIS, Western Europe and America.
BELL-RINGING PROGRAMME
In 2014 the festival’s Bell-Ringing Programme will take place at over thirty churches in Moscow, the Moscow Region and St Petersburg.
The bell-ringing concerts will take place in historic regions of Moscow – Zaryadye and Zamoskvorechye as well as in parks including Kolomenskoe and Sokolniki. For the first time in the festival’s history the bell-ringing programme will see the participation of three bell towers in Ramenskoe in the Moscow Region.
The XIII Moscow Easter Festival will feature over thirty-five of the finest campanologists from dozens of Russia’s regions who will be ringing the bells at the most important churches in St Petersburg, Vologda, Yaroslavl, Veliky Novgorod, Rostov Veliky and Omsk as well as campanologists from Latvia, Belarus and Germany. They will all demonstrate different styles and periods of development of the art of bell-ringing of the Russian Orthodox Church.
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