04.11.2017

The ХII International Piano Festival will be held in two cities for the first time

  14 – 31 December 2017
• Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, chamber venues at the Mariinsky II and the North Ossetia State Academic Philharmonic (Vladikavkaz)
• 25 concert programmes in St Petersburg
• 7 concert programmes in Vladikavkaz
• more than 40 participants

The Mariinsky Theatre is continuing to push back the geographic and temporal borders of its music forums. The ХII International Piano Festival will be unprecedented in terms of its duration and the intensity of its piano marathons, and for the first time will be held at Mariinsky Theatre venues in two cities – St Petersburg and Vladikavkaz.

The XII festival will welcome pianists of different artistic experience and from different music traditions, and there will be many monograph concerts, while the popular projects The Composer and the Pianist and Children for Children will also continue.

The festival opens with a recital by a French pianist – Lucas Debargue, the "revelation" of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition, who in the past week won the prestigious ECHO Klassik music prize. He will be performing works by Domenico Scarlatti, Frédéric Chopin, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel (Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, 14 December, 19.00).
The festival's monograph programmes will celebrate anniversaries of composers that the Mariinsky Theatre has been honouring throughout 2017 – Igor Stravinsky and Rodion Shchedrin.

On 17 December (19.00) at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra will present the programme Stravinsky-135 with five soloists: Alexei Volodin, Sergei Redkin, Zarina Shimanskaya, Eduard Kiprsky and Alexander Maslov. The programme includes Igor Stravinsky's Les Noces, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments and Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra.

On 24 December (15.00) there will be a concert celebrating Rodion Shchedrin's birthday. At the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre the composer's works for piano will be performed by Denis Matsuev (Piano Concerto No 2), Alexei Volodin (Piano Concerto No 1) and Sergei Redkin (Piano Concerto No 4 (Sharp Tonalities). Valery Gergiev will be conducting the Mariinsky Orchestra.

At the festival, acclaimed Brazilian piano maestro Nelson Freire will perform Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 5 with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev (Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, 23 December, 16.00).

In the evening the same day at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre (20.00) Konstantin Lifschitz, "one of the most highly-awarded and powerful pianists of our time" according to international critics, will be performing Johann Sebastian Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge, the composer's works occupying an important position in the soloist's discography.

The brilliant French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard will be dedicating his performances to Impressionist composers. In his recital at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre he will perform Claude Debussy's preludes (28 December, 18.00), while in the programme with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev he will present Claude Debussy's Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra and Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto (29 December, 18.00).

The monograph theme will continue with the Composer and the Pianist project. At the Prokofiev Hall (Mariinsky II) the acclaimed Egyptian pianist Ramzi Yassa will present works by Ludwig van Beethoven (25 December, 18.00), the student of Honoured Artist of Russia Professor Elena Kuznetsova Dmitry Kalashnikov will perform Frédéric Chopin (30 December, 12.00), and the young Italian pianist Viviana Lasaracina will perform Enrique Granados (30 December, 13:30).

Appearing at a festival recital will be Ignat Solzhenitsyn (16 December, 20.00), Nikolai Lugansky (21 December, 19.00) and Zarina Shimanskaya (30 December, 15.00). Returning to St Petersburg will be the acclaimed piano Korolyov Duo comprising Yevgeny Korolyov and Ljupka Hadzi-Georgieva (24 December, 20.00). All appearances will take place at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre.

Rarely-performed piano concerti by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Leoš Janáček and Anton Rubinstein will be presented by Uki Ovaskainen, Konstantin Shamrai and Pavel Raikerus. Conducting the Mariinsky Orchestra will be Mischa Damev (Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, 16 December, 16.00).

"New faces" for audiences at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre include the American pianist and conductor Stephen Kovacevich, whose recital takes place on 22 December (19.00), and the Dutch musician Ramon van Engelenhoven, whose performance at the Mariinsky Theatre has been made possible thanks to his win at the Young Pianist Foundation Competition (The Netherlands). At the festival in St Petersburg he will be performing Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No 5, which won him great acclaim at the competition. Also appearing that evening at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre will be the talented young pianist Abisal Gergiev, who will perform Alexander Scriabin's Piano Concerto. The soloists will be appearing with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev (26 December, 18.00).

Chamber music programmes as part of the project Children for Children at the Prokofiev Hall (Mariinsky II) will see performances by pupils of the Middle Special School of Music of the St Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire Anna Valeyeva and Vasily Petrenko, pupil of the St Petersburg Arts Lyceum Anton Samsonov and winner of the XVII International TV Young Musicians' Competition The Nutcracker Sergei Davydchenko (15, 19, 20 and 22 December, 17.00).

In line with tradition, the festival will present a class taught by one teacher – this year, it will be the pupils of Sergei Babayan from the Juilliard School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music (USA). The pianists will be performing recitals at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre (25 December, 20.00) and with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Zaurbek Gugkaev (27 December, 19.00).

Sergei Babayan himself will be appearing alongside Andrey Gugnin – the winner at the Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia (2016), and the co-founder of the International Piano Festival Mira Jevtić at the festival's closing concert. Valery Gergiev will be conducting the Mariinsky Orchestra (Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, 30 December, 20.00).

In addition to the main programme, the International Piano Festival's participants have prepared a musical gift for audiences – the concert Encore! (Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, 31 December, 14.00).

Vladikavkaz is hosting the International Piano Festival for the first time, running from 20 to 27 December, with seven concerts at the North Ossetia State Academic Philharmonic. The programme will be "framed" by appearances by the young Moscow pianists Konstantin Shamrai and Andrey Gugnin accompanied by the State Symphony Orchestra of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania under Mischa Damev (Bulgaria).
Vladikavkaz will also host the projects The Composer and the Pianist, represented in performances by Dmitry Kalashnikov and Viviana Lasaracina (25 December), and Children for Children, the concerts of which will feature young pianists from Northern Caucasus Republics, students from the piano department of the Vladikavkaz Gergiev College of Arts and prize-winners of the Republican Zarama Lolaeva Young Pianists' Competition (22, 24 and 26 December).

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