From 26 to 28 January the Mariinsky Theatre will be hosting a series of concerts and performances to mark the Day of the Lifting of the Siege of Leningrad.
On this important day in the history of St Petersburg, Valery Gergiev will be conducting Shostakovich’s legendary Seventh Symphony (Leningrad). The majestic music about man and mankind’s resistance to violence and tyranny, to the machinery of evil and destruction, has, even today – almost eighty years since the premiere – a colossal power of influence on the listener. The same evening will also see a performance of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto and Schnittke’s Piano Concerto for Four Hands and Chamber Orchestra. The famed pianist and acclaimed virtuoso Alexander Toradze and Siwon Kim, one of his students from Indiana University South Bend, have been invited to perform the solo parts.
At the Concert Hall on 27 January there will be a performance of works by St Petersburg-Leningrad composers in which one may hear echoes of the Great Patriotic War. The Chamber Symphony – String Quartet No 8, arrangement for chamber orchestra – was dedicated by Shostakovich to the memory of victims of Fascism and war, although he wrote it first and foremost concerning himself and his own losses. The War Letters by Gavrilin set to lyrics by the composer himself strives to express the great admiration at the efforts and endeavours of those people who preserved all that is good and humane for future generations. Sviridov’s Miniature Triptych encompasses more generalised images of a vast nation at times of peace and times of storm. Finally, Prokofiev’s rarely performed oratorio On Guard for Peace to lyrics by Samuil Marshak was written at a time when in all countries there rose a movement of those supporting peace. This movement also saw the active participation of Soviet composers. That evening, the vocal parts will be performed by soloists and the ensemble of the Academy of Young Opera Singers under the direction of Larisa Gergieva. The conductor will be Nikolai Khondzinsky.
There will be other Mariinsky Theatre events, too, to commemorate these anniversary dates. The chamber halls of the Mariinsky II will host the concert Music from the Concentration Camp to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and there will be a performance of Frid’s mono-opera The Diary of Anne Frank, which was written on the basis of the young girl’s actual diary. At the Concert Hall there will be a performance of Krása’s children’s opera Brundibár. Composed in 1942, and subsequently recreated by the composer in Theresienstadt to be performed by children imprisoned in the camp, the opera emerged as one of the symbols of the history of the war. The historic stage will be presenting ballets which in line with tradition are performed on the most important dates for the residents of St Petersburg: the Day of the Lifting of the Siege of Leningrad and Victory Day. Created in the 1960s, Igor Belsky’s Leningrad Symphony and Konstantin Boyarsky’s The Young Lady and the Hooligan today continue to live on, brought to life by a new generation of Mariinsky Theatre dancers.
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